Coalition building among the alt right:

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Alternative Right and Alt-Right: “Only the Alt-Right Can Save the Jews” by Colin Liddell:

Especially during the period in which Netanyahu has dominated its politics (1996-the present), Israel has become increasingly and blatantly ethnonationalist—the very antithesis of what are supposed to be contemporary “Western values” according to the position supported by the Jewish lobby in the West. This more overtly ethnonationalist tendency is driven by demographic shifts within Israel, as well as concerns about terrorism and territorial consolidation. But it also happened because America enjoyed for much of that period a relatively unchallenged hegemony (following the collapse of the Soviet Union), allowing Israel to take liberties it couldn’t take in the 1970s and 80s, and which it will find difficult to take in the more Russian-dominated Middle East that is now emerging.

This means, however, that there is now a blatantly exposed moral contradiction at the heart of Israeli position, as it is increasingly recognised that the “Western democratic values” that Jewish organisations promote in the West (“open borders” and anti-nationalism) would in fact destroy Israel, if implemented there. This is something that the Left and the BDS movement clearly understand, and accordingly they attempt to hold Israel to the same values that the Jewish lobby promotes in the West.

Surprisingly, the main weakness of Israel has turned out to be its enormous donative and media might, which has allowed it to put itself in this ultimately untenable position through short-termist moral manipulations.

Israel has had enormous “moral power”—i.e. the ability to distort moral arguments in its favour—but moral power, let us be clear, is not the same as morality. Moral power is the ability to twist morality, and is therefore in a sense its exact opposite. Without broad-based strength, this is a major problem and indeed ultimately a weakness. Israel can constantly propagandise, bribe, and trick others, but in so doing it ultimately ends up tricking itself. More importantly, its reliance on such perverse “moral power” means that it avoids grounding itself in a true, sustainable morality that is suitable for its situation.

That situation, to be precise, is a situation of conquest, either in its own name or as part of a greater entity, namely the global West—or it is nothing (emphasis added). With that as the foundational premise, there are two possible true moralities for the state of Israel to adopt:

Complete Juche-style self-reliance, justified by constant vigilance and strength. Essentially this would see Israel morphing into a Yiddish version of North Korea or 18th-century Prussia, and relying on its nuclear arsenal and a culture of extreme militarism, to be the unloved catalyst of ever-increasing Islamic unity. End result, a perpetual regional Cold War, in which Israel would face increasing diplomatic isolation and where one major misstep could see its end, possibly in a nuclear war.

Israel as a true outpost of the the West, and thus supported by an undeceived West. But this would have to be a stronger, more expansionary, and anti-Islamic West, cleansed of the Leftist ideologies that the Jews have overwhelmingly supported in the past, and where Israel and the Jews fully supported Westerm ethno- and racio-centrism that echoed that of Israel itself. In such a West, Jews would no longer be seen as traitors, endeavouring to undermine the greater civilisation of which they were a part, but as defending that which defended them. This arrangement could only be achieved through what are essentially Alt-Right ideas of race realism, civilisational hierarchy, and (((culturism))) (brackets added).

There are many choices open to Israel. Choosing to avoid a true moral basis to the state of Israel means continued reliance on trickery and subterfuge, but this ultimately weakens the state of Israel and dooms it to a zombie existence of being a false and soulless state.

But the more moral choices are also hard. The first of the two mentioned above clearly has heavy social costs and would require a constant state of tension and alarm that the Jewish people seem temperamentally unsuited for. There would be extreme brittleness in all that. Indeed the present Israeli state is developing partly along these lines, and is showing some of these dangerous stresses and strains.

The second moral choice is perhaps the best one, the most natural, and also the easiest, although that too has deep costs. This is mainly because it would require World Jewry to start behaving in quite different ways from those that have defined it. But if the effort were made honestly and sincerely, this would have the best chance of reconciling Israel with the West, and thus securing the future of Israel, as part of a more assertive and ethnocentric Western civilisation, holding Islam in check.

However, most of the trends now underway are clearly working against this, creating the conditions of growing Israeli isolation, long-term weakness, and ultimate destruction.

In short, only the Alt-Right can save Israel. One wonders how that undeniable truth sits with the most perspicacious among the Jews.

It’s called Jewing the Whites by first guilt tripping and advocating coalitions of non-or anti Whites against Whites, calling liberalism of their would-be White Left union/national boundaries “the left” and prohibiting Whites from doing the same thing as the anti White coalitions (organizing/unionizing) as that would be “racist” for Whites, if Whites did it. Further, the YKW misrepresent Leftism in a Cartesian way, as if it is not accountable to reality, “just mere constructs”, appeal to White penchant for objectivism (rational blindness to, or denial of, self interest and accountability), as if compassion is only for people beyond their borders/group boundaries (golden rule/ Christianity) - i.e., that is the Problem - “leftist culture of critique” that does not recognize or allow for a White left, its unionized boundaries, the being of White peoplehood. Reaction - right wing, objectivism, Cartesianism, scientism, idealism, religion and most of all, Christianity; search for pure warrant and avoidance of tainted and incomplete warrant in social accountability. Solution - “The Alt Right” ...Whites join and merge with Jews in Zionist supremacist imperialism: “The Left” is the enemy now, all those people who see this reality of the 7 niches that Jewish interests control and what the right wing sell outs have done by selling out to them.

By contrast, we are almost certainly going to need our own left nationalist coalitions, particularly left ethno national coalitions with Asians against the YKW, their right wing cohorts, including Alt Right, Muslims and blacks.

The Israeli conquest of Palestine: by contrast to Colin Liddell’s characterization

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A backlog of articles detailing the connection between Chabad-Lubavitch, Putin, the Russian Federation and Trump.

Politico, “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin”, 9 April 2017:

Where Trump’s real estate world meets a top religious ally of the Kremlin.

Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island’s Manhasset Bay, sits in a squat brick edifice across from a Shell gas station and a strip mall. The center is an unexceptional building on an unexceptional street, save for one thing: Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through it.

Two decades ago, as the Russian president set about consolidating power on one side of the world, he embarked on a project to supplant his country’s existing Jewish civil society and replace it with a parallel structure loyal to him. On the other side of the world, the brash Manhattan developer was working to get a piece of the massive flows of capital that were fleeing the former Soviet Union in search of stable assets in the West, especially real estate, and seeking partners in New York with ties to the region.

Their respective ambitions led the two men—along with Trump’s future son-in-law, Jared Kushner—to build a set of close, overlapping relationships in a small world that intersects on Chabad, an international Hasidic movement most people have never heard of.

Starting in 1999, Putin enlisted two of his closest confidants, the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who would go on to become Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide, to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as “Putin’s rabbi.”

A few years later, Trump would seek out Russian projects and capital by joining forces with a partnership called Bayrock-Sapir, led by Soviet emigres Tevfik Arif, Felix Sater and Tamir Sapir—who maintain close ties to Chabad. The company’s ventures would lead to multiple lawsuits alleging fraud and a criminal investigation of a condo project in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, the links between Trump and Chabad kept piling up. In 2007, Trump hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter and Leviev’s right-hand man at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort. A few months after the ceremony, Leviev met Trump to discuss potential deals in Moscow and then hosted a bris for the new couple’s first son at the holiest site in Chabad Judaism. Trump attended the bris along with Kushner, who would go on to buy a $300 million building from Leviev and marry Ivanka Trump, who would form a close relationship with Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova. Zhukova would host the power couple in Russia in 2014 and reportedly attend Trump’s inauguration as their guest.

With the help of this trans-Atlantic diaspora and some globetrotting real estate moguls, Trump Tower and Moscow’s Red Square can feel at times like part of the same tight-knit neighborhood. Now, with Trump in the Oval Office having proclaimed his desire to reorient the global order around improved U.S. relations with Putin’s government—and as the FBI probes the possibility of improper coordination between Trump associates and the Kremlin—that small world has suddenly taken on outsize importance.

Trump’s kind of Jews

Founded in Lithuania in 1775, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today has adherents numbering in the five, or perhaps six, figures. What the movement lacks in numbers it makes up for in enthusiasm, as it is known for practicing a particularly joyous form of Judaism.

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, recalled having this trait impressed upon him during one family wedding at which the two tables occupied by his first cousins, Chabad rabbis, put the rest of the celebrants to shame. “They were dancing up a storm, these guys. I thought they were black. Instead they’re just black-hat,” Klein said, referring to their traditional Hasidic garb.

Despite its small size, Chabad has grown to become the most sprawling Jewish institution in the world, with a presence in over 1,000 far-flung cities, including locales like Kathmandu and Hanoi with few full-time Jewish residents. The movement is known for these outposts, called Chabad houses, which function as community centers and are open to all Jews. “Take any forsaken city in the world, you have a McDonald’s and a Chabad house,” explained Ronn Torossian, a Jewish public relations executive in New York.

Chabad adherents differ from other Hasidic Jews on numerous small points of custom, including the tendency of Chabad men to wear fedoras instead of fur hats. Many adherents believe that the movement’s last living leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, is the messiah, and some believe he is still alive. Chabad followers are also, according to Klein, “remarkable” fundraisers.

As the closest thing the Jewish world has to evangelism—much of its work is dedicated to making Jews around the world more involved in Judaism—Chabad serves many more Jews who are not full-on adherents.

According to Schmuley Boteach, a prominent rabbi in New Jersey and a longtime friend of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Chabad offers Jews a third way of relating to their religious identity. “You have three choices as a Jew,” he explained. “You can assimilate and not be very affiliated. You can be religious and Orthodox, or there’s sort of a third possibility that Chabad offers for people who don’t want to go the full Orthodox route but do want to stay on the traditional spectrum.”

This third way may explain the affinity Trump has found with a number of Chabad enthusiasts—Jews who shun liberal reform Judaism in favor of traditionalism but are not strictly devout.

“It’s not a surprise that Trump-minded people are involved with Chabad,” said Torossian. “Chabad is a place that tough, strong Jews feel comfortable. Chabad is a nonjudgmental place where people that are not traditional and not by-the-book feel comfortable.”

He summarized the Chabad attitude, which is less strict than the Orthodox one, as, “If you can’t keep all of the commandments, keep as many as you can.”

Torossian, who coincidentally said he is Sater’s friend and PR rep, also explained that this balance is particularly appealing to Jews from the former Soviet Union, who appreciate its combination of traditional trappings with a lenient attitude toward observance. “All Russian Jews go to Chabad,” he said. “Russian Jews are not comfortable in a reform synagogue.”

Putin’s kind of Jews

The Russian state’s embrace of Chabad happened, like many things in Putin’s Russia, as the result of a factional power struggle.

In 1999, soon after he became prime minister, Putin enlisted Abramovich and Leviev to create the Federation of Russian Jewish Communities. Its purpose was to undermine the existing umbrella for Russia’s Jewish civil society, the Russian Jewish Congress, led by oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, a potential threat to Putin and President Boris Yeltsin. A year later, Gusinsky was arrested by Putin’s government and forced into exile.

At the time, Russia already had a chief rabbi as recognized by the Russian Jewish Congress, Adolf Shayevich. But Abramovich and Leviev installed Chabad rabbi Lazar at the head of their rival organization. The Kremlin removed Shayevich from its religious affairs council, and ever since it has instead recognized Lazar as Russia’s chief rabbi, leaving the country with two rival claimants to the title.

The Putin-Chabad alliance has reaped benefits for both sides. Under Putin, anti-Semitism has been officially discouraged, a break from centuries of discrimination and pogroms, and the government has come to embrace a state-sanctioned version of Jewish identity as a welcome part of the nation.

As Putin has consolidated his control of Russia, Lazar has come to be known derisively as “Putin’s rabbi.” He has escorted the Russian leader to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and attended the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, Putin’s pet project, on the Jewish Sabbath. Putin returned that favor by arranging for Lazar to enter the stadium without submitting to security checks that would have broken the rules for observing Shabbat.

In 2013, a $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in Moscow under the auspices of Chabad and with funding from Abramovich. Putin donated a month of his salary to the project, while the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, pitched in by offering relevant documents from its archives.

In 2014, Lazar was the only Jewish leader present at Putin’s triumphal announcement of the annexation of Crimea.

But the rabbi has paid a price for his loyalty to Putin. Since the annexation, his continued support for the Russian autocrat has caused a rift with Chabad leaders in Ukraine. And for years, the Russian government has defied an American court order to turn over a trove of Chabad texts called the “Schneerson Library” to the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Shortly after the opening of the tolerance museum, Putin ordered the collection transferred there instead. The move made Lazar the custodian of a prized collection that his Brooklyn comrades believe is rightfully theirs.

If Lazar has any qualms about his role in all the intra-Chabad drama, he hasn’t let on publicly. “Challenging the government is not the Jewish way,” the rabbi said in 2015.

Trump, Bayrock, Sapir

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, as Trump looked for business and investors in the former Soviet Union during the first years of this century, he struck up an enduring relationship with a firm called Bayrock-Sapir.

Bayrock was co-led by Felix Sater, a convicted mob associate.

Sater and another Bayrock employee, Daniel Ridloff, who like Sater later went on to work directly for the Trump Organization, belong to the Port Washington Chabad house. Sater told POLITICO Magazine that in addition to serving on the board of the Port Washington Chabad house, he sits on the boards of numerous Chabad entities in the U.S. and abroad, though none in Russia.

The extent of Sater’s ties to Trump is a matter of some dispute. Working out of Trump Tower, Sater partnered with the celebrity developer on numerous Trump-branded developments and scouted deals for him in the former Soviet Union. In 2006, Sater escorted Trump’s children Ivanka and Don Jr. around Moscow to scour the city for potential projects, and he worked especially closely with Ivanka on the development of Trump SoHo, a hotel and condominium building in Manhattan whose construction was announced on “The Apprentice” in 2006.

In 2007, Sater’s stock fraud conviction became public. The revelation did not deter Trump, who brought him on as “a senior advisor to the Trump Organization” in 2010. In 2011, a number of purchasers of Trump SoHo units sued Trump and his partners for fraud and the New York attorney general’s office opened a criminal inquiry into the building’s marketing. But the purchasers settled and agreed not to cooperate with the criminal investigation, which was subsequently scuttled, according to the New York Times. Two former executives are suing Bayrock alleging tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering, bribery, extortion and fraud.

Under oath, Sater has described a close relationship with the Trumps, while Trump has testified under oath that he barely knew Sater and would not be able to pick his face out in a crowd. Several people who worked closely with Sater during this period and who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation from both men, scoffed at Trump’s testimony, describing frequent meetings and near-constant phone calls between the two. One person recalled numerous occasions on which Trump and Sater dined together, including at the now-defunct Kiss & Fly in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

“Trump called Felix like every other day to his office. So the fact that he’s saying he doesn’t know him, that’s a lot of crap,” said a former Sater colleague. “They were definitely in contact always. They spoke on the phone all the time.”

In 2014, the Port Washington Chabad house named Sater its “man of the year.” At the ceremony honoring Sater, the chabad’s founder, Shalom Paltiel, recounted how Sater would spill his guts to him about his adventures working as a government cooperator on sensitive matters of national security.

“I only recently told Felix I really didn’t believe most of it. I thought perhaps he watched too many James Bond movies, read one too many Tom Clancy novels,” said Paltiel at the ceremony. “Anyone who knows Felix knows he can tell a good story. I simply did not put too much credence to them.”

But Paltiel went on to recount receiving special clearance years later to accompany Sater to a ceremony at the federal building in Manhattan. There, said Paltiel, officials from every American intelligence agency applauded Sater’s secret work and divulged “stuff that was more fantastic, and more unbelievable, than anything he had been telling me.” A video of the event honoring Sater has been removed from the Port Washington Chabad house’s website but is still available on YouTube.

When I contacted Paltiel for this article, he hung up the phone as soon as I introduced myself. I wanted to ask him about some of the connections I’d come across in the course of my reporting. In addition to his relationship with Sater, Paltiel is also close to “Putin’s rabbi” Lazar, calling Lazar “my dear friend and mentor” in a short note about running into him at Schneerson’s gravesite in Queens.

According to Boteach, this is unsurprising, because Chabad is the sort of community where everybody knows everybody else. “In the world of Chabad, we all went to Yeshiva together, we were all ordained together,” Boteach explained. “I knew Berel Lazar from yeshiva.”

The Port Washington Chabad house has another Bayrock tie. Among its top 13 benefactors, its “Chai Circle,” as listed on its website, is Sater’s partner, Bayrock founder Tevfik Arif.

Arif, a former Soviet bureaucrat turned wealthy real estate developer, owns a mansion in Port Washington, an upscale suburb, but he makes a curious patron for the town’s Chabad. A Kazakh-born citizen of Turkey with a Muslim name, Arif is not Jewish, according to people who have worked with him. In 2010, he was arrested in a raid on a yacht in Turkey that once belonged to the founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, and charged with running an international underage prostitution ring. Arif was later cleared of the charges.

Before the scandal on Ataturk’s yacht, Arif partnered closely with Trump, Ivanka Trump and Sater in the development of Trump SoHo along with the Sapir family, a New York real estate dynasty and the other half of Bayrock-Sapir.

Its patriarch, the late billionaire Tamir Sapir, was born in the Soviet state of Georgia and arrived in 1976 in New York, where he opened an electronics store in the Flatiron district that, according to the New York Times, catered largely to KGB agents.

Trump has called Sapir “a great friend.” In December 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, at Mar-a-Lago. The event featured performances by Lionel Ritchie and the Pussycat Dolls. The groom, Rotem Rosen, was the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, the Putin oligarch Leviev’s holding company.

Five months later, in early June 2008, Zina Sapir and Rosen held a bris for their newborn son. Invitations to the bris described Rosen as Leviev’s “right-hand man.” By then, Leviev had become the single largest funder of Chabad worldwide, and he personally arranged for the bris to take place at Schneerson’s grave, Chabad’s most holy site.

Trump attended the bris. A month earlier, in May 2008, he and Leviev had met to discuss possible real estate projects in Moscow, according to a contemporaneous Russian news report. An undated photograph on a Pinterest account called LLD Diamond USA, the name of a firm registered to Leviev, shows Trump and Leviev shaking hands and smiling. (The photograph was first pointed out by Pacific Standard.)

That same year, Sapir, an active Chabad donor in his own right, joined Leviev in Berlin to tour Chabad institutions in the city.

Jared, Ivanka, Roman, Dasha

Also present at the Sapir-Rosen bris was Kushner, who along with his now-wife Ivanka Trump has forged his own set of ties to Putin’s Chabad allies. Kushner’s family, which is Modern Orthodox, has long been highly engaged in philanthropy across the Jewish world, including to Chabad entities, and during his undergraduate years at Harvard, Kushner was active in the university’s Chabad house. Three days before the presidential election, the couple visited Schneerson’s grave and prayed for Trump. In January, the couple purchased a home in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood and settled on the city’s nearby Chabad synagogue, known as TheSHUL of the Nation’s Capital, as their house of worship.

In May 2015, a month before Trump officially entered the Republican presidential primary, Kushner bought a majority stake in the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street from Leviev for $295 million.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump are also close with Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova. Abramovich, an industrialist worth more than $7 billion and the owner of the British soccer club Chelsea FC, is the former governor of the Russian province of Chukotka, where he is still revered as a hero. He owes his fortune to his triumphant emergence from Russia’s post-Soviet “aluminum wars,” in which more than 100 people are estimated to have died in fighting over control of aluminum refineries. Abramovich admitted in 2008 that he amassed his assets by paying billions of dollars in bribes. In 2011, his former business partner, the late Boris Berezovsky—an oligarch who had fallen out with Putin and gone on to live in exile at the Trump International on Central Park West—accused him of threats, blackmail and intimidation in a lawsuit in the United Kingdom, which Abramovich won.

Abramovich was reportedly the first person to recommend to Yeltsin that he choose Putin as his successor. In their 2004 biography of Abramovich, the British journalists Chris Hutchins and Dominic Midgely write, “When Putin needed a shadowy force to act against his enemies behind the scenes, it was Abramovich whom he could rely on to prove a willing co-conspirator.” The biographers compare the two men’s relationship to that between a father and a son and report that Abramovich personally interviewed candidates for Putin’s first cabinet. He has reportedly gifted Putin a $30 million yacht, though Putin denies it.

Abramovich’s vast business holdings and his personal life overlap with Trump’s world in multiple ways.

According to a 2012 report from researchers at Cornell University, Evraz, a firm partly owned by Abramovich, has contracts to provide 40 percent of the steel for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project whose completion was approved by Trump in March after years of delay. And in 2006, Abramovich purchased a large stake in the Russian oil giant Rosneft, a company now being scrutinized for its possible role in alleged collusion between Trump and Russia. Both Trump and the Kremlin have dismissed as “fake news” a dossier that alleges that a recent sale of Rosneft shares was part of a scheme to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Meanwhile, his wife, Zhukova, has long traveled in the same social circles as Kushner and Ivanka Trump: She is a friend and business partner of Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, one of Ivanka’s closest friends, and a friend of Karlie Kloss, the longtime girlfriend of Kushner’s brother, Josh.

Over the years, Zhukova has grown close to Jared and Ivanka themselves. In February 2014, a month before Putin illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Ivanka Trump posted a photo to Instagram of herself with Zhukova, Wendi Deng, a bottle of wine, and the caption, “Thank you [Zhukova] for an unforgettable four days in Russia!” Deng was recently rumored to be dating Putin, though she denied it. Other photos from the trip show Kushner was also present in Russia at the time.

Last summer, Kushner and Ivanka Trump shared a box at the U.S. Open with Zhukova and Deng. In January, Zhukova reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration as Ivanka Trump’s guest.

On March 14, The Daily Mail spotted Josh Kushner dining with Zhukova in New York. According to the outlet, Josh Kushner “hid his face as he exited the eatery with Dasha.”

A week later, at the same time Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were vacationing in Aspen with her two brothers and their families, Abramovich’s plane flew from Moscow to Denver, according to a flight tracking service. Abramovich owns two properties in the Aspen area.

A spokesman for Abramovich declined to comment on the record about the Colorado overlap. The White House referred queries about the couples to a personal spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump. The spokeswoman, Risa Heller, initially indicated she would provide answers to questions about the Colorado overlap and recent contacts between the couples, but did not do so.

President Trump has reportedly sought security clearances for Kushner and Ivanka, who have taken on growing roles in his White House. For anyone else, a close personal relationship with the family of a top Putin confidant would present significant hurdles to obtaining security clearances, former high-ranking intelligence officials said, but political pressure to grant clearances to the president’s children would be likely to override any security concerns.

“Yes, such connections to Russia should matter for a clearance,” said Steve Hall, a former CIA Moscow station chief. “Question is, will they?”

“I don’t think the Trump family camp will have any trouble with security clearances, as long as there’s no polygraph involved,” said Milt Bearden, former chief of the CIA’s Eastern European division. “It’s absolutely crazy, but not going to be an issue.”

***

With Washington abuzz about the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump world’s relationship with Putin’s Kremlin, their overlapping networks remain the object of much scrutiny and fascination.

In March, the New York Times reported that Lazar had met last summer with the Trump administration’s special representative for international negotiations Jason Greenblatt, then a lawyer for the Trump Organization. The men characterized the meeting as a normal part of Greenblatt’s campaign outreach to Jewish leaders and said it included general discussion of Russian society and anti-Semitism. The meeting was brokered by New York PR rep Joshua Nass, and Lazar has said he did not discuss that meeting with the Russian government.

In late January, Sater met with Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to discuss a proposed Ukraine peace deal that would end U.S. sanctions on Russia, which Cohen then delivered to Trump’s then-national security adviser Michael Flynn at the White House, according to the Times. Cohen has given varying accounts of the episode.

According to one Jewish Republican who said he sees Cohen “all the time” there, Cohen himself is a regular presence at the Midtown Chabad on Fifth Avenue, a dozen blocks south of Trump Tower and a half-dozen blocks south of his current office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Cohen disputed this, saying, “I’ve never been to a Chabad and I’ve never been to one in New York City either.” Cohen then said he last stepped foot in a Chabad over 15 years ago to attend a bris. He said the last Chabad-related event he attended was on March 16 at a hotel in Newark when he spoke at a dinner honoring Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs, David Shulkin. The dinner was hosted by the Rabbinical College of America, a Chabad organization.

To those unfamiliar with Russian politics, Trump’s world and Hasidic Judaism, all these Chabad links can appear confounding. Others simply greet them with a shrug.

“The interconnectedness of the Jewish world through Chabad is not surprising insofar as it’s one of the main Jewish players,” said Boteach. “I would assume that the world of New York real estate isn’t that huge either.”

Zionist Report, “COMMENTARY: Trump and Putin – Agents of Chabad-Lubavitch”, 28 Mar 2017:

Americans have given up on America a long time ago, and pretty soon they will get a real taste of their atrocious mistake. When countries don’t have what it takes to assume their responsibility, the result, without a doubt, is their own destruction.

“Trump and Putin: Agents of Chabad-Lubavitch”

The following is a section I wrote on November 7, 2016; it was part of an update titled Why the globalists will announce Trump as the winner of the election. I’m reposting it on this page because it contains information that is vital to your understanding of what’s really going in the world right now. So here goes…

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Breitbart, “Anti-Mass Migration Central European Nations Volunteer €35 Million To Reinforce EU Borders”, 15 Dec 2017:

The four central nations that comprise the Visegrad group (V4) have set aside 35 million euros to help European Union (EU) member states protect the political bloc’s external borders against illegal mass migration.

The four countries that make up the Visegrad group, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, have all agreed to donate the money to protect the EU external border in an announcement this week. All four countries are attending a EU conference to discuss migration issues beginning Thursday AP reports.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico commented on the move saying, “if we will see good projects in the future, first of all, projects that are effective, we are ready to spend even more money because we really want to show solidarity.”

Mayor Laszlow discusses overwhelming success of Hungary’s border fence - “instituted because we’re ‘normal” - the fence cut migration to Hungary by 99%

Some of the countries in the V4 group have been accused of a lack of solidarity by some in EU leadership. The Hungarian government has been particularly critical of those in Brussels who have argued about solidarity.

Breitbart London @BreitbartLondon

EU Dismisses Hungarian Request for ‘Solidarity’ over Border Controls, ‘We Won’t Support Fences’http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/09/04/eu-dismisses-request-border-securitty/ 10:00 PM - Sep 4, 2017

EU Dismisses Hungarian Request for ‘Solidarity’ over Border Controls, ‘We Won’t Support Fences.’

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs replied to the EU elites in September writing, “The distorted narrative that is spun from Brussels attempts to convince European citizens that somehow European solidarity should be connected to accepting migrants, many of whom have crossed illegally into the territory of the EU.”

Kovacs also argued that Hungary had funded EUR 883.2 million from its own budget in order to protect the EU external borders.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has consistently argued against mass migration, said Thursday that the new injection of cash will also go toward helping control illegal migration from Libya.

The EU, along with Italy have funnelled money into Libya to help train coastguard recruits and some allege that the Italians have even paid local warlords to stop the influx of migrants.

All four Visegrad group countries continue to refuse to participate in the EU’s migrant redistribution scheme with Prime Minister Fico noting, “Quotas do not work, they are ineffective, the decision on quotas really divided the European Union.”

The Spirit Lives, by Roy Harper

“Where once were men but now are sheep
- a fiction and far cry,
From planet Earth’s proud animal
- who would be you and I
Alas, our forebears drank the cup of poisoned alibi
And made excuses far and wide,
And made God in the sky.

This boogaloo’s now round the world
- bad trips for everyone.
No more the man of paradise
Or the Celt of Albion
They queue like burning moths to spread
- the all time viscous lie
You Christians destroyed our tribe
- I’ll fight you till I die….”

“The Spirit Lives” - Roy Harper

        “I can see no reason at all to change these lyrics” - Mancinblack

Mateusz Morawiecki. third from left, at the Warsaw Zoo holding a document honoring rescuers of Jews, Sept., 2017. (Courtesy of From the Depths)

JTA, “New Polish prime minister refers to rescue of ‘Jewish brothers’ in his inaugural address”, 12 Dec 2017:

(JTA) — In his first speech as Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki said that non-Jewish Poles who saved their “Jewish brothers” during the Holocaust represent the “essence of what it means to be Polish.”

Morawiecki, a former banker who in September spoke about his Jewish roots – two of his aunts are Jewish — in a speech about rescuers of Jews in Warsaw, presented his inaugural address Tuesday to the parliament.

The remark about Jews was unusual because of the reference as brethren and the de facto head of state including the subject in an inaugural address.

Morawiecki, who was the finance minister before his promotion in a surprising reshuffle in the government of the right-wing ruling Law and Justice Party, spoke mostly about the economy and foreign relations.

But in speaking about the national identity, he said: “The deep community dimension is inscribed in our tradition: Assistance to people in flight, Żegota saving our Jewish brothers and Solidarity. This is real proof of what Polishness is and what the community is.”

Żegota is the name of a Polish resistance group that helped Jews during the Holocaust. Solidarity was an anti-communist movement, in which Morawiecki’s father was active during Poland’s subjugation to the Soviet Union.

Morawiecki, 49, succeeds Beata Szydło, also of the right-wing party, who has served in the post since 2015.

Morawiecki, who was not even a member of Law and Justice two years ago, joined the government as minister for economic development in 2015 before adding the post of finance minister last year.

His Jewish roots were known in Poland. Morawiecki spoke about it in some detail earlier this year at a ceremony at the Warsaw Zoo honoring a former zoo director and his wife, Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who saved hundreds of Jews there, and other rescuers.

Polish non-Jews killed at least 1,500 Jews in a series of pogroms during and directly after the Holocaust, according to the Polish chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich

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Michael Gove in an information pod at the WWF Living Planet Centre in Woking. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The Ecologist, “Michael Gove has it in his gift to make this a green Christmas”, 7 Dec 2017:

The restoration of life and the end of extinctions. Good land management plans for every country. The end of ocean plastics. No more pesticides. Is all this too ambitious for a Christmas wish list? Ruth Davis of the RSPB does not think so.

So now is the moment for a new generation of green campaigners to come to the table.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has in the last few months repeatedly said that he wants our country to be an environmental leader – and has signalled his seriousness by banning bee-harming pesticides, and laying out plans for a new green watch-dog. 

Whatever your politics, this is exciting. It could also be globally significant. Because to put all his plans into action will require a revolution in environmental thinking, involving not just protection but renewal – an approach which could spearhead an international plan to save nature. 

And it is this international plan that we must demand, to tackle the spiralling environmental crisis. Nothing else will do.  So if I was to writing to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) today, I would include these things in my Christmas list..

Earth and seas

Bold new goals to restore life on earth - its abundance, its diversity, the amazing places where it still thrives, and the areas where it can return. Human-driven extinctions must end, as must the destruction of our last, precious intact natural ecosystems.

Land for life. Each country should have its own plan for good land management, driving investment into the ecological innovation and know-how needed to re-boot modern agriculture, and safeguard long-term food security. Governments should reward farmers for restoring soils, protecting natural stores of carbon and supporting wildlife.

An end to oceans plastics, and protection of the ‘blue commons’.  We must champion global efforts to defeat the monstrous problem of plastic in our oceans.  At the same time, we must set aside much larger areas where marine life can recover, building on the ambition of the Blue Belt.

Much tighter regulation of pesticides.  The neonicotinoid ban is great news – but we need to rethink how we use chemicals in the environment.  My old friend Nigel Bourne, of Butterfly Conservation, said it first and said it best – next time, we shouldn’t have to face a crisis before we consider a ban.

Help for people to shape the places where they live.  In talking internationally, we often forget that change happens locally. To achieve more, we need to involve more people; rebuilding local economies around a shared vision for the environment, investing in industries and businesses that repair, rather than damage, the earth and seas around us.

Ordinary people

You might think this list is preposterous – too long, too ambitious -  when the country has so much else on its plate. But what’s the point of Christmas, if you can’t think big?  And although I am fifty this year, I have begun to feel the child-like sense of adventure that comes when something amazing is about to happen – when a movement is being born.

We are re-thinking what it means to eat well, both for our own health, and within the limits of the land available - since this land is also home to the rest of life on earth.  A new generation is wondering anew about our responsibility towards animals held in captivity, and to the wild creatures trapped in the debris of our lives.

The manacles of plastic around the feet of sea-birds appall us; the heaps of elephant carcasses killed for body parts are images that will last a life-time, a silent call to action for the conservationists of the future.

But anger and grief alone are not enough. To change things for the better also takes hope and purpose. And hope is alive, not least because of the steadfastness of the climate movement. Many will claim that today’s shift away from fossil fuels was inevitable – the result of technological evolution, rather than the efforts of campaigners. But They will be wrong.

The change was catalysed by ordinary people, who succeeded in getting a few governments to listen to them when it seemed we were destined to burn every last lump of coal in the ground.

Demanding laws

As a result, the next generation of environmentalists understands that campaigning energy, coupled with disruptive technology, can challenge the status quo.  They value the potential for human ingenuity to turn problems inside out – to replace rare metals in batteries with material made from apple-cores; to build homes that are also vertical farms and hanging gardens.

This is modern magic, and because of it, the future need not be more of the same. 

Earth optimism – a confidence that solutions are possible and that we can and will renew the fabric of our tattered world – is a heady force. But it will need political action to give it wings.

So now is the moment for a new generation of green campaigners to come to the table. It is also the moment when we are deciding what sort of a country we want to live in; and when Mr Gove is making the environment front page news.

After Brexit, we will inherit laws from the European Union which have helped safeguard wildlife and tackle pollution. We must grasp this legacy, but we must also build on it - demanding laws and policies that will not just ‘stop the rot’, but begin to renew the tattered fabric of our living planet.

The game’s afoot! as Holmes used to say to Watson. Let’s play.

This Author

Ruth Davis is deputy director of global conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

The Guardian, “Michael Gove: from ‘shy green’ to ‘full-throated environmentalist’?”, 12 Nov 2017:

Michael Gove has transformed from a “shy green” into a “full-throated environmentalist”, according to close allies who have said the Conservative MP has been heavily affected by his latest ministerial brief.

Howls of protest made by green groups, commentators and political opponents when Theresa May decided, in June this year, to elevate the high-profile Brexiter to environment secretary were slowly being proven wrong, they claim.

Woodland Trust, “Shocking declines in large old trees worldwide”

There has been: a ban on ivory sales; bigger penalties for animal cruelty; questions raised over farming subsidies; action on plastic bottles; CCTV in slaughter houses; a ban on bee-harming pesticides; and now the promise of a post-Brexit “green revolution” with a new independent watchdog as the centrepiece reform.

And yet when he was appointed to the role, former energy secretary Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, said it was like “putting the fox in charge of the hen house”.

He argued that Gove had even tried to remove climate change from the geography curriculum – advisers have hit back to say he only wanted to move the subject to science.

UK will back total ban on bee-harming pesticides, Michael Gove reveals

Others were concerned that an MP whose bullish manner as education secretary alienated large parts of the teaching profession, would be ready to strip back environmental protections in the Brexit process.

But one Tory minister has told the Guardian they believe the opposite has happened – suggesting that Gove had instead undergone a conversion inside the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

“He is greener than Zac Goldsmith and best mates with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF,” the sources said, referring to a Tory MP known for environmental views. “Fox in the chicken coop in reverse.”

Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven said there was no doubt “Gove has defied many people’s expectations on the environment” with a strong stance on issues like bee-harming pesticides, single-use plastic bottles and the future of the internal combustion engine.

But he said air pollution moves had fallen well short and it was one thing to promise a green Brexit and another to deliver it. “The proof will be in the pudding, especially with the forthcoming agriculture and fisheries bills. But so far the starters are quite good.”

A friend insisted that Gove’s interest in the environment was not all new, pointing to a 2014 speech in which he told the Conservative Environment Network: “I was one of those characters we call ‘shy green.”

But the ally admitted that the MP had become much more passionate. “He is interested in policy and politics and if he is given a subject he will throw himself into it. Hence the ‘shy green’ is now a full-throated environmentalist.”

Even George Monbiot, the environmental campaigner and Guardian columnist, who was highly critical of the MP in previous roles, has claimed: “This is amazing. One by one, Michael Gove is saying the things I’ve waited years for an environment secretary to say.”

He joked that if this environment secretary ever met his former self at education, they’d hate each other.

Michael Gove ‘deeply regrets’ Trump’s approach to Paris climate agreement

And it is no wonder. The pleasant surprise of the green lobby is a far cry from the view of teachers and heads when Gove was in charge of the country’s schools. One union leader, Mary Bousted, called him “possibly the most contentious and divisive education secretary ever”.

And yet from environmental groups – that were deeply concerned by Gove’s promotion – there is some surprising praise.

Tanya Steele, who is chief executive at WWF, said the minister had hit the ground running with a “broad and ambitious agenda”, although she also set out the scale of the task facing him.

“A lot more needs to happen if we are to address major threats to our environment and the global crisis of biodiversity decline,” she said, calling for a 25-year plan with clear milestones.

Craig Bennett, CEO of Friends of the Earth, said that despite initial alarm at the appointment of Gove, which he said was fair enough given previous comments on EU regulations, “he has been making all the right noises and he’s started to make the right action”.

He added: “To his credit, the moment he got the job he reached out and definitely went beyond the normal pleasantries to engage, listen and debate.”

Bennett said the minister’s speech on soil fertility was one that the green lobby had been waiting and hoping that every environment secretary would deliver.

But Bennett sounded a serious note of caution. He described preparations for Brexit in time for spring, 2019, as an “impossible task” and said it was hard to see how the minister could keep to his promise to maintain environmental regulations after the UK leaves the EU.

Michael Gove calls for views on setting up plastic bottle deposit return scheme

“They say they are going to cut and paste environmental regulation – but when you cut and paste often the formatting goes awry and you lose fundamental things and that is our fear,” he said, arguing that leaving the EU would not be good for the environment.

“It will be one of the biggest shocks to environmental protections in years. And that is not to question [Gove’s] good intentions.”

Molly Scott Cato, a Green MEP for the South West England electoral region, insisted that she would keep Gove the environmentalist in “special measures”.

For example, despite the positive move to ban neonicotinoid pesticides, she said he was still allowing limited use under emergency authorisations, which could be damaging.

“I believe Gove is posturing on a series of environmental cheap wins merely to establish himself as a sheep, before revealing himself as a wolf,” she said.

Gove’s friend admitted that Gove’s time inside Defra had impacted on the minister’s views on Brexit – in particular making him embrace the idea of a two-year transition period to help cope with the complexity of preparations.

And he has taken on his cabinet colleague, Liam Fox, by insisting that Britain will not compromise on standards in order to do a trade deal with the US, for example by accepting chlorinated chicken.

But asked if environmental responsibility had made the minister regret his hefty support for Brexit, the ally responded: “Not in the slightest – he believes in it. In particular, he thinks it creates huge opportunities in Defra, what he calls a ‘green Brexit’.”

Daily Telegraph: Britain’s record-breaking trees identified: tallest, biggest, oldest and rarest trees have been identified in a new study.

Michael Gove demands end to Sheffield tree-felling programme.

It is not the first time Gove has received a reaction of pleasant surprise while heading a government department. After a rough ride at the education department, his plans to offer prisoners more freedoms and boost learning in prisons were well received when he was justice secretary.

One difference, according to a source, is that Gove had spent years in opposition drawing up his plans for the country’s schools, but when he was moved to justice and environment, briefs he knew less well, he turned to the experts for advice.

Rebecca Pow, MP, on board of the Conservative Environment Network, said her colleague’s time listening to green groups had resulted in him deciding the Tories would “go up a gear” on environmental issues.

She said he had taken bold decisions, and argued that there were signs of his interests in the environment in previous roles, including making sure primary school children could name a variety of animals including amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles.

Bennett, of Friends of the Earth, said Gove was not the first politician to be affected by the role of environment secretary, pointing to former Tory MP John Gummer, whose work while in the cabinet had him branded a “green guru” by one newspaper. He said the same had happened with David Miliband.

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