Tag Archive for: Russian

House Oversight Releases Bank Records Showing Hunter Biden Took Millions From Russian And Ukrainian Oligarchs

The House Oversight Committee released bank records Wednesday showing Hunter Biden took millions of dollars worth of payments from Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh oligarchs.

Hunter Biden received millions from Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev when his father was vice president, the committee found. The committee has identified over $20 million in payments from foreign partners to the Biden family and their associates. 

In February 2014, Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a shell company affiliated with Hunter Biden and his business associate Devon Archer, House Oversight showed. The payment was also identified in a September 2020 Senate report laying out Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

Nearly $1 million of the money was transferred to Archer and the rest was placed in Rosemont Seneca Bohai, another shell company Archer and Biden used to take foreign payments, House Oversight found. Archer testified House Oversight on July 31 that he and Biden were co-owners of Rosemont Seneca Bohai and the company was opened in Delaware the day before Baturina’s payment.

Rosemont Seneca Thornton did not have any other money come into its account after Baturina’s payment, House Oversight records show.

Shortly thereafter, Biden and Archer joined the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and worked on behalf of Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Each made more than $1 million annually and took approximately $83,000 per month from Burisma.

The Burisma payments were wired to Rosemont Seneca Bohai until late 2015, when Biden began having the payments sent into his shell company Owasco P.C. due to Archer’s legal troubles.

In addition, Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai in April 2014, two months after Hunter Biden met with Rakishev at a Washington, D.C. hotel. Rosemont Seneca Bohai paid $142,300 for a sportscar for Hunter Biden the next day, House Oversight discovered.

Archer and Biden scheduled a meeting in June 2014 for Burisma executives, Chinese business associates and the Kazakh government to discuss a three-way business deal, House Oversight said. Rakishev maintained close ties to then-Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason, abuse of power and attempting a coup in April 2023.

Biden and Archer made approximately $3.32 million from Burisma in 2014 and 2015, according to bank records produced by House Oversight.

Joe Biden dined with Baturina at Washington D.C’s Cafe Milano in 2014, Archer testified. On April 16, 2015, Joe Biden dined with Massimov, Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and Burisma executive Vadim Pozharsyi at Cafe Milano, House Oversight stated.

“During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered,” Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, Chair of the House Oversight Committee said in a press release.

“It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings and allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Biden family while he was Vice President of the United States.”

AUTHOR

JAMES LYNCH

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Burisma Was Told To Remove Picture Of Joe Biden And Devon Archer From Its Website, Emails Show

Biden Family ‘Brand’ Made People ‘Intimidated To Mess With’ Burisma, Devon Archer Testified

Peter Doocy Confronts Biden Face-To-Face Over Alleged Family Enrichment Schemes

Meet Kenes Rakishev, The Newest Foreign Oligarch In The Hunter Biden Saga

RELATED VIDEO: This is influence-peddling, plain and clear: Ari Fleischer

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ukraine: what would a Russian invasion actually look like? These are the three most likely scenarios

Russia has been laying the ground for military action against Ukraine since 2014.


Despite suggestions to the contrary from the Kremlin, Ukraine remains surrounded by Russian troops, both along its long border with Russia and from within occupied Crimea. The Russian Federation has deployed land, air and naval forces that give the Kremlin a range of possibilities should it seek to initiate military action.

Not for the first time, Russian forces look set to challenge the sovereignty of Ukraine, and the west appears no closer to knowing what to do about it without risking war between nuclear armed states.

Russia has been laying the ground for military action against Ukraine since 2014, when it seized Crimea and thereby gained a more substantial military foothold to the south. Meanwhile, the ongoing war in Ukraine’s Donbas region allowed Russian security and intelligence units to continue to gauge Ukrainian military and paramilitary operations.

In spring 2021, the Russian Federation ramped up actions against Ukraine, stopping short of actual war. It launched cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns as well as disrupting the energy supply. The Ukrainian Security Service has identified operational and sleeper units from Russia’s Federal Security Service, Foreign Intelligence Service, Military Intelligence and Special Forces operating within its borders.

If military action does occur, there are three likely scenarios for how it would play out.

Scenario 1: decapitation

The first is the decapitation approach. Russian military and security forces would seek to remove the current government and state powers in order to insert replace them with people more favourable to (and owned by) Moscow. Perhaps surprisingly, this would entail keeping on some people who are already working in the Ukrainian state. There are figures who have shown sympathies for and have worked with the Russian Federation.

This scenario would probably entail security and intelligence units on the ground in Ukraine as well as units from the military exercise currently being conducted in Belarus. The greatest concern for Russia in this scenario would be how the Ukrainian military and police would respond. There may also be a significant public backlash against a change of government led from Moscow.

Scenario 2: war in the east

The second possibility is the eastern war approach. Here, Russian forces would seek to reinforce the breakaway regions in the Donbas with arms, supplies and intelligence. These areas would then be used as a springboard to take more Ukrainian territory to more fully cover those areas where ethnic Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians are located.

Such a manoeuvre could take Russian troops as far as the Dnieper river, which splits the country into east and west. It could also stretch across the coast of the Black Sea all the way to the Moldova border (where another Russian reinforced breakaway region is located).

Such an operation would be supported by military forces stationed in and around the Russian region of Rostov-on-Don, to the east of Ukraine, forces to the south stationed in Crimea and also probably Russian army motor and rifle battalions stationed in the breakaway Transnistria in Moldova.

Scenario 3: full invasion

The final possibility is the full invasion approach. All of those forces mentioned thus far as well as air units located further north would seek to defeat Ukraine militarily. They would use recent experience in combat operations in Syria to defeat any popular insurgency against Russian forces.

This approach would be devastating for the people of Ukraine. Large-scale death tolls would be expected across the Ukrainian military and police forces as well as among local populations adjacent to battles. There would be major flows of refugees to the west of Ukraine and into the bordering states of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. Such a refugee crisis could be the largest in Europe since the second world war.

Daunting repercussions

It’s important to note that these approaches are not mutually exclusive. They could even occur sequentially should the Kremlin be unsatisfied with the changes it finds in Ukraine or the west.

Regardless of what Russia does, other countries with unsettled disputes over breakaway territories, such as Moldova with Transnistria and Georgia with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, will be watching events nervously. A victory in Ukraine for Russia might well fuel actions against these countries in the future. And if the west fails to respond robustly, even countries like Estonia and Latvia could face threats in the future.

Russia’s military threat against Ukraine has put the west in a difficult position. It has to decide how to deal with a belligerent Russia and how far it should expand its membership to, say, Ukraine or Georgia and beyond. Nor are these predicaments helped by the fact that the United States is more concerned with China, the South China Sea and the status of Taiwan these days than the fate of eastern Europe.

What’s more, the very future of NATO may be on the line if it cannot have a credible response to Ukraine through diplomacy, military assistance and maybe even military response. Such a loss of credibility would be a major win for Russia, which sees NATO as a threat to its own national security and global strategy to regain power. In other words, the significance of the situation in Ukraine cannot be underestimated.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

COLUMN BY

David J. Galbreath

David Galbreath is Professor of International Security at the University of Bath, in the UK. His current research is on military transformation, the role of science and technology in defence and security,… More by David J. Galbreath

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Senator Ted Cruz: ‘Joe Biden Becoming President Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened…For Vladimir Putin’

MOVIE: America Under Siege — Soviet Islam

AmericaUnderSiege_SovietIslam_instagram01-644x644-400x400“Only a coalition of Islamists and Marxists can destroy the United States.” – Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez, AKA Carlos the Jackal

Soviet Islam is the second episode in the five-part America Under Siege webseries releasing over the course of 2017. Each episode investigates the growing influence of revolutionary Marxists and their allies in different sectors of American society.

When the Soviet Union failed to eradicate religion, it quickly changed tactics. After World War II, Soviet Communists forged alliances with unlikely partners – radical Islamists and Middle Eastern nationalist dictators. Beginning in the Cold War and continuing through to today, the Kremlin has armed, trained, and supported these Islamists and dictators to advance a frightening goal: subverting their shared American enemy.

Those radicals became a domestic threat in the 1960s. Religious extremists like the Nation of Islam co-opted Soviet ideology to agitate American institutions and disrupt democracy. For the Soviets, the intent was to make the U.S. ungovernable through organized protest and violence. But while the Cold War may be over, the threat from the Kremlin is now more serious than ever.

Today, Putin is the heir to the Soviet strategy of subversion. Picking up where the old KGB left off, his regime continues to leverage the vast network of radicals across the Middle East and the West the Soviets created.

The film was written by and stars conservative author Trevor Loudon, was directed by Judd Saul, and produced by Cohesion Films in partnership with Dangerous Documentaries (a project of the Capital Research Center). (Bombthrowers is a project of the Capital Research Center, as well.)

Trevor’s research into Soviet and modern Russian influence on radical Islamism and Middle Eastern dictatorships is especially urgent given the current conflict in Syria. Showing that there are still so many influential political actors in America whose ideological roots grow out of the Soviet Union’s past meddling in Islamic society is unsettling — and helps explain Russia’s modern day tactics to subvert its enemies from within.

RELATED ARTICLE: Red-Green Alliance Funded by Billionaire Democrats

EDITORS NOTE: America Under Siege: Soviet Islam is available to watch on DangerousDocumentaries.com.

Iran to Russia: Take $14 Billion and Build us a Modern Army

russia iranThe Debka File reports:

Iran’s Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan arrived in Moscow this week at the head of a large military delegation and laid before President Vladimir Putin and his Defense Minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu a $14 billion check. Now, make our Revolutionary Guards Corps and regular forces into an up-to-the-minute war machine, he said.

The plan to make over and upgrade Iran’s military was first approved by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is to be paid for with funds released by newly lifted sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The ayatollah aspires to rebuild the two branches – the IRGC with 150,000 troops and the regular army of 420,000 – as the most powerful armed force in the Middle East.

The fee on offer to Moscow covers the best-quality arms purchases and the foundation of a wide-ranging military industry for turning out Iran’s requirements of warplanes, tanks and other high-grade systems.

The entire project as presented to Russian leaders is estimated to unfold over 10 years, during which relations between Tehran and Moscow should grow progressively stronger.

Read more.

RELATED ARTICLE: Afshin Norouzi, a criminal in Germany and Japan, a “refugee” in Montreal

War between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkey?

This Business Insider article by Fabrice Balanche of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) reflects the potential confrontation by advancing Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed of Kurdish PYD, Arab and Assyrian units with Erodgan’s Turkey after seizing the strategic Tishrin Dam and crossing to the West Bank of Euphrates River with the support of U.S. coalition air support.

Islamic State window into Turkey

Map Source:  Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The border area is a largely rural agricultural area with mixed Arab and Turkmen population.  There is evidence that the Arab tribes in the region would pledge support for the PYD led SDF. There is a  possible link up between advancing Assad forces with Russian air support and  SDF units cutting off IS  from the open border to Turkey possibly resulting in isolating  the self declared Caliphate of the Islamic State  at Raqaa. The Kurds consider this border region as historically Kurdish legacy area.  The Russians have already coordinated with the advancing Kurdish YPD led SDF in northern Aleppo province.

The combined Saudi/ Turkish Jaish-al Fatah (JF) rebels are defending a supply road against Kurds to the West and Assad forces to the south. Russian aerial bombardment could result in loss of control and encirclement of the JF rebels. Hence, the likelihood of a dilemma for the U.S. coalition in the war against ISIS with a NATO ally determined to bar any Assad-SDF linkup closing off the current open border with Turkey.

What follows is analysis by Balanche in this Business Insider article drawn from a definitive report published by WINEP, ”The Kurds may be winning against ISIS, but they could end up making tensions in the region worse:”

Although the latest Kurdish offensive runs the risk of spurring direct Turkish intervention, it could also help isolate Islamic State forces in the area from their capital, with significant implications for the rest of the combatants in Syria.

Since October, Islamic State (IS) forces in the eastern part of Syria’s Aleppo province have been under pressure and compelled to fight on several fronts: against the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its Arab allies near the large Tishrin Dam; against the Syrian army and Russian aircraft around Kuwaires military airport and al-Jaboul Lake; against the rebel umbrella group Jaish al-Fatah (dominated by Ahrar al-Sham and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra) in the Azaz corridor between Aleppo and the Turkish border; and against the local population in Manbij, toward which the PYD and its allies are advancing.

With the PYD seizing the only intact bridge across the Euphrates River for several hundred miles and the Syrian army potentially advancing further north or west, a large group of IS fighters in the Aleppo area could be left without land access to their capital in Raqqa. This prospect raises the question of who would benefit from eliminating IS on this front, and how.

Kurds consider large parts of this area as their own, including the long zone along the Turkish border — not only the Kurdish-held cantons of Afrin to the west and Kobane to the east, but also the sections in between that are currently held by rebel groups or IS. The Kurds have similar views on Manbij, which lies well south of the border. Even if the population in some of these areas is mostly Arab, the PYD still considers them “historically Kurdish,” seemingly basing their argument on notions from the Middle Ages and Salah al-Din.

Accordingly, the PYD aims to ensure territorial continuity between its Afrin canton and the rest of its self-proclaimed Kurdish region (called Rojava). The group has already annexed the predominantly Arab district of Tal Abyad further to the east, but it will be difficult to replicate that feat in more heavily populated districts — as of 2010, more than a million people resided in the contested districts of Azaz, al-Bab, Manbij, and Jarabulus, compared to around 130,000 in Tal Abyad.

Of course, hundreds of thousands of civilians have since fled to Turkey, but the Kurds would still face the challenge of integrating a large Arab population into Rojava — not to mention the local Turkmen minority, which is under Ankara’s protection.

Indeed, Turkey refuses to let the Kurds control the entire border and has warned several times that it will attack them if they cross the Euphrates, as it did in July when it shelled a PYD position near Jarabulus. On December 26, the Democratic Forces of Syria (an umbrella group for the PYD and its Arab allies) seized Tishrin Dam, and then took the village of Abu Qilqil on the other side of the river three days later, bringing them only twelve kilometers from Manbij.

Since the November terrorist attack in Paris, Europeans have insisted that the Islamic State’s two-way route through Turkey be closed for good. In the absence of a moderate Arab Sunni force able to meet this demand, the West would prefer that the corridor be closed by Kurds rather than al-Qaeda-linked groups such as Ahrar al-Sham or Jabhat al-Nusra.

The Kurds are eager to fulfill their dream of a united Rojava along the entire northern border, and to deny them at least some progress toward that goal would be to stop the only effective ally against IS in northern Syria. If the West does not work with them on this objective, it will push them into the arms of Moscow, which has made clear to the PYD that it is quite willing to help; in fact, there is already clear Kurdish coordination with Russian forces in northern Aleppo province.

At the same time, allowing the PYD to seize the entire border is unacceptable to Turkey, and the West needs Ankara’s assistance on several fronts, including the refugee issue and the fight against IS. Therefore, if the PYD offensive continues toward Manbij and perhaps even further beyond Turkey’s Euphrates redline, the United States and its coalition partners will need to be careful in determining whether, where, and how to support the advance — and what to say in response to Turkish protests.

For its part, Ankara will need to decide how far it is willing to go in enforcing that redline given the political and diplomatic risks of deeper intervention, especially against the only ground force making progress against IS in Syria. In that sense, the PYD’s offensive is as clear a signal as Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon: the die is cast.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

President Obama’s Latest Treachery on Iran Nuclear Deal

It has been a spectacular week for Russia and Iran.  Monday, Foreign Ministers Lavrov and Russia and Mohammed Javad Zarif meet in Moscow given the success of the JCPOA negotiations and UN Security Council endorsement to discuss listing weapons sanctions and ways to shore up the flagging fortunes of ally Bashar Assad in bloody Syria, the junior partner in the so-called Axis of Resistance.  That was followed by the announcement of an agreement to deliver on an expedited basis, four versions of the mobile S-300 advanced air defense system for $900 million.  Reuters first reported that Iran plans to sign a contract for four of the S-300 Russian missiles next week.”The text of the contract is ready and our friends will go to Russia next week to sign the contract,” Iran Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan reportedly said.  The earlier version of the S-300 systems were purchased in 2007, but not delivered because of objections by both Israel and the U.S.  Further sales of conventional Arms and missile technology were barred under the 2010 UN Security Council resolution.

A member of the Russian forces guards in front of surface-to-air S300 missiles in a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile unit on the Cape of Fiolent in Sevastopol on March 5, 2014. A military source has told Interfax-Ukraine that Russian commandos have seized control of the anti-aircraft missile systems and are guarding them. AFP PHOTO/ VIKTOR DRACHEV

A member of the Russian forces guards in front of surface-to-air S300 missiles in a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile unit on the Cape of Fiolent in Sevastopol on March 5, 2014. A military source has told Interfax-Ukraine that Russian commandos have seized control of the anti-aircraft missile systems and are guarding them. AFP PHOTO/ VIKTOR DRACHEV

The S-300 systems basically provides an anti-Missile shield of Iran’s “peaceful “ nuclear program against any U.S./Israeli aircraft  or medium range ballistic missile attack according to  the Pentagon.  Fox News reported “We have long expressed our concerns over reports of the possible sale of this missile system to the Iranians,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told Fox News. Further that “is a very capable weapons system that can bring down U.S. or Israeli jet aircraft.”

How capable are the new S-300 system?   Note this Washington Free Beacon report:

According to the defense website Deagel, the S-300V4 missile system is “1.5 to 2.3 times more effective” than previous systems “in its anti-missile defense capabilities.” The system is “capable of shooting down medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) with a maximum range of 2,500 kilometers.”

All this stemmed from the July 24th meeting in Moscow by Iran’s controversial Quds Force director Gen. Soleimani with Russian President Putin and Defense Minister Shogui endeavoring to expedite these deliveries of S-300 air defense systems and other weapon systems, including advanced Russian jet fighters to replace aging US fighters from the era of the Late Shah. That would complement the deliveries of Chinese stealth Jet fighters under a $10 Billion oil barter agreement. While objecting to the Russian sale to Iran of advanced S-300 missile deal, State Department press spokesman Admiral  John Kirby suggested  that it was excluded from the JCPOA terms lifting  both  conventional weapons and missile technology  sanctions under the 2010  UN  Resolution 1929 five and year  sunsets provisions.

Parchin Test Site 7-2015

Parchin Iran Military Explosives Test Site.

Then there was the exclusive AP report of its examination of one of the secret side deals between Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The AP had been given access to the secret deal by a senior official of the IAEA on conditions of anonymity. The AP report of its examination of the secret side deal revealed   that it gave Tehran, the authority to use its own inspectors to deliver findings on alleged prior military developments for explosive nuclear triggers at the contested military site of Parchin. Iran for years had barred  IAEA inspectors access to Parchin and other known sites under the pretext that it would violate the Islamic Regime’s national security.  U.S. Intelligence has recently said that digital photos show the site being ‘sanitized”. The board of the IAEA, including the US and some of the P5+1 partners,  contemplate acceptance under the terms of the JCPOA  lifting upwards of $100 billion plus in sanctions relief slated for December of this  year based on the delivery of the PMD inspection reports. The reactions of the White House and presumably President Obama on vacation on the offshore island of Martha’s Vineyard stretch credulity.  They simply repeated the explanations by the President and White House press spokesperson Josh Earnest dismissing issues of trustworthiness of Iran’s Mullahs. The meme was the highly intrusive and robust IAEA inspection regime of the JCPOA would catch Iranian cheating instantly enabling punitive snapback of sanctions.

When  queried by journalists at yesterday’s State Department Daily Press Briefings, Press Spokesperson, Admiral John Kirby contended that  the IAEA  Director General Amano briefed both Chambers of Congress in closed door sessions on IAEA Iran inspection terms stating that the side deals  were “routine” and exemplary of the “robust intrusive” inspection regime. Further, he repeated the line that the US and other P5+1 already knew what Iran did a decade ago in prior military developments in violation of the non-proliferation treaty.  These PMD reports by the IAEA were to establish a baseline for the “intrusive, robust” inspections over the 10, 15 and 25 terms of the JCPOA. Now, given the AP report on this secret side deal between the IAEA and Iran it is questionable whether the entire agreement can assure any compliance by Iran.

Watch this C-Span video clip of State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby at yesterday’s Daily Press Briefing:

The reaction from Republican leaders in both Chambers was incredulity.  That was underlined by statements by two experts on nuclear inspections, former IAEA Deputy Director Ollie Heinonen of Harvard’s Belfer Center and David Albright of Washington, DC –based, Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). The AP report on the IAEA side deal with Iran noted these comments:

House Speaker John Boehner said, “President Obama boasts his deal includes ‘unprecedented verification.’ He claims it’s not built on trust. But the administration’s briefings on these side deals have been totally insufficient – and it still isn’t clear whether anyone at the White House has seen the final documents.” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce: “International inspections should be done by international inspectors. Period.” John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican senator, said, “Trusting Iran to inspect its own nuclear site and report to the U.N. in an open and transparent way is remarkably naive and incredibly reckless. This revelation only reinforces the deep-seated concerns the American people have about the agreement.”

The Israel Project Daily Report noted Heinonen stating “that he knew of no other instance in which a country under scrutiny was allowed to conduct its own investigation.” Albright of ISIS, “called this arrangement “unprecedented and risky.” Albright warned that “ambiguity over Iran’s nuclear weaponization accomplishments and residual capabilities risks rendering an agreement unverifiable by the IAEA.”

Notwithstanding these developments Democrat Senators continued signing up yesterday signed up in support of the President’s nuclear pact with Iran.  Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who succeeded Senator Kerry, said in a statement to the Boston Globe, yesterday:

I have concluded that diplomacy remains our best tool to secure a nuclear-weapon-free Iran, That’s why I intend to support the Iran nuclear agreement when it comes before Congress in September.”

This agreement is far from perfect and carries risks. But I believe our negotiators achieved as much as they reasonably could, and that if strictly implemented, this plan can be effective.

In contrast to Markey and other loyal Democrat Senators, we suggest that they heed the warning of colleague New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez at his Seton Hall University address:” Hope is not a national security initiative … if Iran is to acquire a nuclear bomb, it will not have my name on it”.

The perfidy of the Obama Administration is exposed each day, yet the cupidity his claque of supporters of the Iran nuclear pact in the Congress like Senator Markey and other Democrats in both Chambers of Congress is appalling.  Witness the mind numbing comment by House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA: “I truly believe in this agreement”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Moscow on August 18, 2015.

PRAVDA: U.S. Taxpayers pay $3.5M to Study Lesbian Obesity

Pravda.Ru reports:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has conducted a research to find out how the sexual orientation influences the body build.
The U.S. taxpayers have already paid $3.5 million for the ‘significant’ project, and it is to last till June 30.

Sexual Orientation and Obesity: A Test of a Gendered Biopsychosocial Model,” seeks to determine why there is a disparity in the obesity rates between straight women and lesbian women and straight men and gay men.

According to the study, “It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women. In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government debt is going to beat ‘records’ of WWII.

Read the full article here.

Glenn Beck vs. Osama Bin-Laden and Others

Russia is  our enemy  No.1–I have been writing about Russia for the last twenty-five years, warning America and the world. I am very glad and grateful to Glenn Beck for his current three lectures on the same subject. Considering the significance of his work The Root: The Red Storm, I am offering  an article written by me about Glenn in 2011.

Soviet Socialism in the 21st Century: Glenn Beck vs. Osama Bin-Laden and Others

Glenn Beck is not a “paranoid lunatic,” as some are calling him. He is an honorable, trustworthy, and brave man with uncompromising integrity. He is a beacon for all decent Americans, maybe for all decent people in the world. He loves his country and is doing everything possible to prevent a looming catastrophe of enormous proportions. He is right to talk about the unity of Socialists and Communists and to charge that they are in cahoots with radical Islamists and others. Of course, he has never been a Soviet attorney and has never lived under Soviet socialism, so he can’t be expected to know who is behind all those radical forces. Still, I feel deeply grateful to him for what he has done during the last several years. And maybe my articles will help him to do this honorable work even better.

I am writing this article in the end of June 2011, while every evening Glenn Beck is talking about rising anti-Semitism in the world. He calls for us to defend Israel and reminds us about the tragic Jewish Holocaust. The stories told on his show by survivors of the Holocaust from different European countries bring tears to our eyes and fear to our hearts.  Some viewers experience anew their own personal tragedies through the stories of the survivors. Glenn Beck is warning the world–Evil is alive and constantly attacking you… Be ready!

In fact, anti-Semitism is an integral part and major element of any form of national-socialism. The German people were not alone in their hatred of Jews: Hitler and Goebbels were joined by Mosley, Quisling, Stalin, and others. Fascism doesn’t belong to any particular nationality, race, ethnic group, or religion; it is contagious to all.  The history of the world proves that the peril lurks everywhere.

This preamble and Glenn Beck’s efforts to warn you lead me straight to the heart of the matter, to a political force that remains largely unknown and shadowy—the Soviet Mafia. I did not coin this term: it is the title of a book written by my colleague, defense attorney Arkady Vaksberg. The book was published by St. Martin Press in 1991. The book discusses the character of Soviet leaders and their criminal activities and also predicts instability and destruction in the world, the same things Glenn Beck is talking about.

There are three main concepts in the book:

  1. The Evil Empire may be dead, but not the evil that drove it—the Soviet Mafia.
  2. The book gives us a new definition of political forces and their leaders, previously known as Communists, the KGB, and the Soviets—a new collective identity—the Soviet Mafia.
  3. The Soviet Mafia is a multinational political force and has no particular ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.

Vaksberg redefines the old terms of Soviet history and points to a new collective identity: the Soviet mafia, the nucleus of organized crime.  He notes that while the former Soviet republics, the so-called New Independent States, have different cultures and religions and speak different languages, all their governments are part of the Soviet Mafia—thugs with no ethnic identity who belong to the same criminal clan. This connection explains the title of the book—The Soviet Mafia.

Vaksberg traces chronologically the ideological make-over of the Soviet Mafia. According to his analysis, Leninism/Stalinism established a regime of political tyranny that Khrushchev then refashioned into a less harsh system. Brezhnev, yearning nostalgically for the days of Stalin, completed the process by bolstering the power of the existing apparatus with support from political gangsters, and knitted together the two groups into an economic mafia. He concludes that”power and criminality mingled, [and] the rulers of the country became…quite literally criminals.”

He also predicted that “the reawakening of nationalist feeling with its deep historic roots and potential for international overspill may in effect save the Soviet mafia and all those ‘dear comrades’ in its leadership, because public attention is diverted to those very difficult nationality problems.” What Vaksberg predicted, has happened: the Soviet mafia had been saved and international overspill has occurred.

Americans and many others regrettably are unlikely to fully understand the book —it is filled with difficult Russian names and the content is completely foreign to decent human minds. Instead, they can read Simona Pipko’s The Russian Factor: From Cold War to Global Terrorism (Xlibris, 2006). The book is a thoughtful description of events, but it is more than merely descriptive. It is a contemporary explanation of the historical development of terrorism and its identity in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Many Americans often use the term “democratic Russia.” We immigrants also hoped for real democracy in Russia during the brief honeymoon of 1989-1991. That hope was killed and the young Russian democracy fatally wounded in 1992-1993. Since then, the process of democratization has been reversed and the value of human life has been once more debased.  Violence has increased in Russia and former apparatchiks, read former Soviets, Communists, and KGB members, have successfully insinuated themselves into the new democratic Russia. Their infiltration signals an end to real freedom in the country—the Soviet Mafia has survived. But it also means more troubles for the rest of the world. Though Osama Bin Laden was definitely the enemy of Glenn Beck and America, I’d like to start with Beck’s other enemies and the foremost enemy of America—The Soviet Mafia.

I have dedicated many pages of this series to Stalin, his ideology, his dictatorship, and his heirs.  The succeeding generations of Stalinists further developed his legacy, updating the designs, tactics, technology and skills they needed to implement their strategies.  Thecreator and founder of the Soviet Mafia, Stalin armed this aggressive cadre with his formula for power. That formula served him and his heirs for 80-90 years and is still in use today. Stalin facilitated and implanted an unprecedented network of centralized bureaucratic tentacles that constituted the apparatus of power.  Within the bureaucracy, the Communist Party machine and security forces played the dominant role.The bureaucracy exercised total control over the population and turned Stalin into a dictator with absolute power and the country into a Police State—the regime we called Soviet Socialism.

Stalin was an old hand at manipulating different ethnic groups and religions.  He was a former Commissar for Nationalities and diligent student of Marx and Machiavelli.  He used ethnic and sectarian rivalries and racial animosities to set people against one another.  He demonized any who opposed him. He imposed his formula in all the Soviet republics: a shrewd technique to control territory, regardless of nationality, religion, or culture. The same process of Sovietization was instituted in the Eastern European countries of the former Warsaw Pact/Socialist Bloc alliance.

The march of the Soviet Mafia and the Stalinist Formula for Power was not limited to Europe, as you already know.  The Middle East became a target beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s. The strategy used in Eastern Europe was successfully implemented in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Iran, places where Soviet front-men were put in power.  Radical Islam was incorporated into the Soviet Mafia. Mentioning Somalia was not a mistake—just recall Clinton’s friend General Aidid.  Like Arafat, he was trained by the Russian security forces.

The Soviet Mafia never sleeps—the 21st century testifies to that. Just look at Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, probably Turkey, and Peru, where a friend of Hugo Chavez recently won the presidency. The Soviet Mafia survives through perpetual aggression. The fraud perpetrated by Karl Marx and quadrupled by his heirs needs 24/7 action to survive. Instead of Marx’s call for the eventual creation of “a classless society of Communism,” this fireball ignited the rest of the world and turned the Soviet Mafia into an International Mafia that unites all the previously mentioned countries under the Kremlin’s umbrella. Do you remember Stalin’s undeclared war and his design for a global government under the auspices of the Soviet Union?  You almost have it.

There is nothing surprising about the constant attempts to destabilize the world in the 21st century. Socialism is a fraud that produces nothing legitimate.  To survive, it attacks capitalism – remember, the best defense is a good offense, and the Soviet Mafia’s defensive tactics are always aggressive and violent. You are already acquainted with many of the Soviet Mafia’s methods and tactics from my preceding articles about Marxism-Leninism and the Stalinist dictatorship. They include deceit of every kind, provocation, intimidation, and violence, all tactics that reflect the nature of Socialist Morality.

All the violent and ferocious methods that were first applied by Stalin on Soviet territory were later turned against targeted foreign countries to harm them in many different ways, including through destruction from within. The informant system, so fully developed in the Soviet bloc, was put in place in targeted countries and the infiltrated informants were usually the means used to inflict damage. You know how Strange New Political Leaders and The Communist Ideological Department work together with the KGB on college campuses in targeted countries to brainwash the students, organize protests and demonstrations, and provoke clashes.  All such actions are meant to destabilize targeted countries and their legitimate governments from within—Control and Power are the Agenda.

I believe that the most horrific methods used in Stalin’s war against Western civilization, which I call sabotage, are criminal and I hope American lawyers will find an appropriate term for this category of crime. There are different forms of sabotage and I will give you two examples. The recruitment of foreigners to organize protests and provoke clashes on foreign territory constitutes one form of sabotage described by former KGB agent Stanislav Levchenko. Here is how he described one facet of the agency’s activities abroad:

“During its almost 70 years of existence, the KGB has developed a highly professional external intelligence service that is also the world’s largest… Nobody tells the KGB what is moral and what is not. What matters is the product, the result, and almost any method to achieve it is acceptable. I was involved in what can be called political seduction of leaders and members of foreign peace movements. I had to lie to them about almost everything. And, of course, I could not mention to them that in the Soviet Peace Committee, four of the staff members were full-time KGB intelligence officers whose task was to penetrate foreign public organizations.” The KGB, New Counterpoint 7, No.2. Winter 1992.

This is only one area of the KGB’s foreign activities—there are plenty of others. Stanislav Levchenko provided some perspective on what was planned for the future, meaning today in the 21st century: “The KGB and GRU (military intelligence) are extremely aggressive and cynical intelligence services. They use any relaxation of the climate… to enhance their recruitment efforts… I was in Tokyo, when the Helsinki Agreement, which started the so-called détente, was signed…  A few days later, I read a top-secret cable, signed by General Kruchkov (Chairman of the KGB). The cable ordered every KGB officer, stationed in every country in the world, immediately to double recruitment efforts against Americans and citizens of other NATO countries.”

The KGB today is the official Russian government and a former KGB agent Vladimir Putin is the head of the government. To grasp the predicament in the world and the menace of Soviet Mafia activities, recall the description of the first Russian security agency, the Cheka, how it developed over the years of the Stalin Regime and how it changed its name 5-6 times to conceal the crimes committed over the last 80-90 years. Study the table below to get an idea of the Soviet Mafia’s long-range strategy of deception.  You will better grasp the extent of its political expansion, recruitment, brainwashing, penetration and subversive activities around the world. This table is taken from a Communist political manual published by Soviet Political Literature in 1981.

The Process of Global Development of the Communist Movement

Year      Countries with active Communist Parties       Number of communists globally

1917                              1                                                      400,000

1928                              46                                                    1.7 million

1939                              69                                                    4.2 million

1946                              78                                                  20.0 million

1960                              87                                                  35.0 million

1969                              88                                                  50.0 million

1980                              94                                          over 75.0 million

Here you have answers to many questions, as well as a clue about who is behind the protests and demonstrations in Wisconsin and the union leaders who are agitating people against the state governor. Be ready for so-called anti-war and other types of protests and unrest in the countries across the world. It would not be surprising if the number of Communists registered in 1981 were double today what it was in 1980.

How beneficial to the Soviet Mafia it is that most countries today, and certainly America, have such weak immigration controls!  It is especially important to keep an eye on immigrants from the Muslim world. We have already been burnt by their terrorist actions. The Soviet Mafia has an army of terrorists with both symbolic and real generals leading them—Yasser Arafat, Moamar Qaddafi, General Adid. They are fighting on hundreds of fronts to destroy us and establish regimes of the Stalinist agenda.

I cannot pass over this vitally important issue of immigration because it is a key consideration in the Stalinist war. The many-faceted global immigration crisis is intertwined with other crucial social issues. Immigration may prove to be the single most important factor in determining the nature of our country’s future.  The immigration flow will define the characteristics of the national Melting Pot in terms of age, education, ethnicity, culture, religion and so on. If terrorism is an immediate danger, other issues are also of use in Stalin’s war to defeat America. I am an immigrant and I know all the difficulties of immigration—you have to build and nourish America’s spirit in your heart, not adjust to America for the benefits that freedom offers. You must become blend into the American Melting Pot rather than eroding and destroying America the Beautiful.

I promised to give you another example of Sabotage and this case is more a crime against humanity. I cannot reveal the name of the source of my information as the individual still lives on former Soviet territory.  I do not want to put this person at risk of assassination. I will even present the story in my own words to avoid suggesting his identity by directly citing him. The event will confirm the main point of this series that the Soviet Mafia is at war with Western civilization and the capitalist economic system. This story will help you understand what is going on in the world in the 21st century.

The Soviets were well-known in the world for stealing secrets from the West. The technical information illicitly acquired by the Soviets was usually used for civilian benefit in the West, but the Soviets modified it for aggressive military application.  The Soviets were closely watching policy developments in America and the West in general. America was a leader of the capitalist economy and Japan followed close behind.  For the Soviets, Japan was in many key respects one with western countries.  Furthermore, Russia had (and still has) a territorial dispute with Japan over the Kuril Islands. In the 1960s President Kennedy gave his full backing to an intensive US investment in space exploration and aeronautical development. Soviet intelligence came to the conclusion that the USSR would never be able to compete on a par with America in space.

As usual in the Stalinist war, the Soviet Mafia started looking for alternative weaponry.  Soviet scientists were instructed to invent a new means of destruction. The country’s huge military complex was mobilized and came up with the answer—tectonic weaponry. Reading this series of articles, you have already become acquainted with the malicious nature of the Soviets and their intelligence. The following story however, will shock you.

In the late 1960s in the backwoods of Siberia, the Soviets began building a research laboratory. One of the concepts developed made a lot of “sense” and was based on the principle of physics that a body in descent has greater maneuverability than one in ascent. Hundreds of scientists from different fields of Academia were brought together to develop a device based on that principle with the use of pipeline construction technology. Geologists, physicists, specialists in electronics, oil-drilling, and other scientists carried out field experiments in Siberia for two decades and finally engineered the needed device. They named it Pluton-Plutonium, or maybe from the world “Pluto,” King of the Underworld.

The device resembled a mole or a water snake. It was programmed to deliver two or three independently targeted warheads (bombs). The first experiment on international territory was initiated in 1984.  It lasted for two years and covered a distance of sixty-five thousand kilometers. Pluton was programmed to penetrate 860 kilometers under the earth’s surface, starting in Siberia, and then to move upwards in the area of the Sea of Japan.

In August 1985, Soviet ships in international waters registered an earthquake near Oshima Island and a resulting tsunami. Pluton then made its return journey, ending up in the Far East of the USSR in 1986. The source of this information did not know who is running these operations, but concluded that the Soviet Mafia has had this secret weaponry since 1986. You can make your own conclusion about recent waves of earthquakes around the globe and the source of global warming in the 21st century.

In this connection, I can add example of how the Soviet Mafia uses natural forces for its own purposes. On the day the Olympic Games opened in 1980, the sky over Moscow was covered with heavy clouds. A member of the Politburo called the KGB. By the time the opening got underway, the sun was shining and the sky over Moscow was blue. As I found out later, KGB scientists used an extremely powerful mega-laser to disperse clouds. In the same way, they also could create rain and storms.

The goal of “conquering nature” is the creed and agenda of the Soviet Mafia. Stalin’s experiments inside the Soviet Union cost the country billions, destroyed the natural ecology, and killed millions. Now the Soviet mafia is destroying countries around the globe. I would suggest our American scientists research the nature of the recent tornadoes and flooding in America, keeping in mind the proximity of Cuba. In this regard, I am afraid that the next target is Florida.

It is time now to return to Glenn Beck. Do you remember all his warnings over the last several years? Putting his life on the line, he warned you about events and people attacking the American economic system, traditional culture, and our way of life. Don’t you think Glenn is talking about the same people I identified in the title of this article as the Others? I do. The only difference is our experiences—I address the issues based on my past experiences, Glenn Beck by his real present experiences and events our country is going through. Please, recall the definition of the Soviet Mafia presented by Arkady Vaksberg. Perhaps Glenn did not read his book, but he is talking about the same evil of government and political corruption, waste, and absence of transparency and accountability.

I titled this article “Glenn Beck vs. Osama Bin Laden and Others.”  Five or six years ago, I read a suggestion that Osama Bin-Laden was the KGB’s creation—The Russian Factor: From Cold War to Global Terrorism, Xlibris, 2006. The author suggested that the KGB used their creature Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has played a major role in the Muslim movement since the 1970s, to seduce Osama Bin-laden to be a symbol of the movement. The chain of events was logical. For your information, it was a group of Egyptian military officers along with al-Zawahiri who assassinated then-President of Egypt Anwar Sadat in 1981. In my opinion, al-Zawahiri has always been one of the masterminds behind al-Qaeda.  This is clear from reading about his background, connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, and ideological hatred of the West.

In my article Strange New Political Leaders you learned how certain political leaders were molded by the KGB. Yasser Arafat was the first Soviet henchman, but not the last. Look at the Middle East today and you will see them with your own eyes: Muammar Qaddafi, Basher Assad, General Aidid, and undoubtedly some in the Egyptian military left from the days of Sadat’s assassination. Pay attention to their speeches — they have different ones for domestic and foreign consumption—they are defrauding their own population as the Soviet Mafia did and does. Also watch the opposition in targeted countries— they are not true opponents, they are controlled and manipulated to act out a phony rivalry. Molding the new leaders around the globe has been the KGB’s policy for almost a hundred years, in the Middle East it is a direct pathway to Control and Power over oil.

Returning to Osama Bin-Laden, I came to the conclusion that the author of The Russian Factor is right. The death of Osama Bin-Laden gave us additional evidence of his real functions and agenda. Just analyze other so-called leaders of Al-Qaeda—creations with different images that appeal to specific audiences. We saw a picture of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who did not even know how to hold a rifle or a gun. We have an analogous story with Ben-Laden. He had also two different images: in October 2010 before the election in America, he is shown as a young, healthy, powerful figure, a leader of Al-Qaeda—his beard and hair are dark. Now in 2011 we learn what he really was like—a petty old man, wrapped in a black blanket, sitting huddled with a remote control watching his own image on TV. The reality is demystifying the fraud. Do you believe that man had operational and technical control over Al-Qaeda across the globe?  I do not. For me—the symbol was skillfully molded.

Please recall the Stalinist war against capitalism and Western civilization. It was a fraudulent double-game to cover up the real Agenda. I hope my articles have provided enough evidence for you to see this. Glenn Beck is trying to give you such information and evidence from his own perspective. He is discussing the harm to America brought about by the progressives; they definitely belong to the category of Others. Moreover, maybe they were influenced by the same Marxist fireball and have identical roots in the Soviet Mafia. In this regard, Glenn Beck is doing great work with a group of American historians—he has established a huge classroom in the land, reviving real American history and presenting it on every show. I am not an expert in American history, but we are both providing knowledge to decent people and warning the world…

I do not know how Bin-Laden was killed on June 1, 2011, the mysterious death raises a lot of questions. I hope time will give us the answers. We will continue discussing Osama Bin-Laden in the next articles.  Meanwhile, please go to ej.ru or ej.com and read the articles by Julia Latynina.

To be continued at  www.simonapipko1.com.

Anonymous’ hackers being used by Russian Intelligence?

Jeffrey Roman from Data Breach Today reported on the 2012 cyber attack against the Sheriff of Lake County, Florida computers. Roman wrote, “Hacktivists associated with Anonymous have reportedly released sensitive information from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. According to WKMG Local 6, hackers who came from an Internet server in Russia posted 16,000 files online, which include 911 calls, witness and victim statements, names of young crime victims, and names of Central Florida SWAT team members and their personal phone numbers, as well as the SWAT unit’s operating guide, the number of team members and number of snipers.”

“The hacking group LulzKnightz, which associates itself with AntiSec and Anonymous, has claimed responsibility, and took to a Pastebin page to post the data online, which equals 4.7 gigabytes of information,” notes Roman.

In a statement posted to that page, LulzKnightz explained its justification for the attack, saying, “More evidence that the illegitimate justice system protects their own, who get away with rampant corruption and theft, while the police apply unconstitutional profiling and pressure in their efforts to raise their arrest quotas and keep homeland security money rolling in.”

But is this attack about exposing an “illegitimate justice system”, “rampant corruption and theft” or something else?

Russian_Foreign_Intelligence_Agency

Seal of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – Служба Внешней Разведки

Who was really behind this attack on a Florida sheriff’s computers and why? The who: The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – Служба Внешней Разведки. The why: International espionage.

The Lake County Sheriff’s computers were targeted, as are tens of thousands of other law enforcement computers, by a foreign government – Russia. The purpose is to gather intelligence. Russia monitors groups like LulzKnighz, AntiSec and Anonymous. In some cases, Russia embeds its own people into these and other hacker organizations to gather needed intelligence. These groups become a cover for Russian intelligence operations. As one expert in cyber warfare put it, “Some of these hackers may be ignorant of the fact they are being used, but they are not innocent.”

In this particular case the data traveled to an Adidas server in Romania and then to servers in Moscow. Foreign intelligence services monitor hacker groups daily and when they detect a breach, such as what happened in the Lake County Sheriff case, they tag along and take what they really want. Who gets the blame? Not the Russians, of course, but Anonymous who is more than happy to take the credit. The consequences of these attacks have a direct impact on US national security.

The Russians wanted the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) usernames and passwords  on the Lake County Sheriff’s computers. Why? Because many of the members of the JTTF use the same username and password for their own department computers. This gives Russia access to a variety of federal computer systems like that of the FBI.

Anonymous is being used by Russian intelligence. Some members of Anonymous, and other groups, are actually plants. Others do it as proxies, a.k.a. spies, being paid by the Russians in Bitcoins for their work. Some just do it for the fun of exposing an “illegitimate justice system” and unknowingly are aiding and abetting treason against the United States.

Perhaps Anonymous needs to vett who their members really are? Some of them are part of Russia’s “illegitimate justice system”.

EDITORS NOTE: The feature photo is of members of the ‘Anonymous’ group travel on the London Underground system between Scientology’s Queen Victoria Street and Tottenham Court Road offices. The masks are those of everyman ‘V’ from the film ‘V for Vendetta’. It is courtesy of James Harrison.

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