Miss Universe 2015: Betting Odds on Winner and Favorite ...
Miss Universe 2015: Betting Odds on Winner and Favorite ...
Miss Universe 2015: Betting Odds on Winner and Favorite ...
Miss Universe Pageant 2015 - Steve Harvey screws up ...
2015 Miss Universe Pageant - Mirror Online
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“About 24 hours after arriving from Moscow, a private jet regularly used by the head [German Gref “co-chair of Putin’s A.I. board”†] of Russia's largest state-run bank remained at an airport just a short drive from where Donald Trump is vacationing.” – Inquisitr (2020)
Inquisitr—Mystery Deepens Over Why Kremlin Bank CEO’s Plane Remains In Florida, 50 Miles From Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago (1/5/2020) “Almost 24 hours after landing at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) in Florida early on Saturday morning, as The Inquisitr reported, a private jet frequently used by the CEO of Russia’s largest state-owned-bank remained on the ground there—about 50 miles south of Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach where Donald Trump is vacationing until Sunday afternoon. Whether Sberbank CEO German Gref† was aboard the plane when it arrived on a 12-hour, 23-minute nonstop flight from Moscow remains unconfirmed. Russian media has reported that the plane, a Gulfstream G650 operated by Jet Air Group with the tail number RA-10204, is used frequently and perhaps exclusively by Gref. (UPDATE: According to flight records posted by the site FlightAware, the Sberbank jet departed Fort Lauderdale at 12:23 a.m. EST on Sunday morning, just 21 hours and 34 minutes after it arrived from Moscow—where it landed on the return trip at 6:17 p.m. local time, or 10:17 a.m. EST, a nine-hour, 53 minute flight.) Flight records posted to Twitter show that the plane made the same nonstop flight from Moscow to Fort Lauderdale last year, on the same dates. On January 4, 2019, the plane landed in Fort Lauderdale at 2:49 a.m., according to the records. In 2020, the plane arrived at the same airport on the same date, landing at 2:31 a.m. Last year, however, Trump did not spend his holiday break at his Mar-a-Lago Club, remaining in the White House during what was then an ongoing government shutdown. On January 4,Trump was indeed present at Mar-a-Lago but left the estate at 9:55 a.m.—six hours and 24 minutes after the Sberbank jet touched down—to visit Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. He remained at the golf club until 3:12 p.m., according to a public schedule posted by FactBase. Sberbank has been under United States economic sanctions since 2014, over its involvement in Russia’s annexation of the territory of Crimea from Ukraine. In November 2013, however, Gref himself co-hosted a party honoring Trump in Moscow, during Trump’s visit there for the Miss Universe beauty pageant, according to a report by The Daily Beast. Trump was then the owner of the pageant. Following Trump’s return to the United States following the 2013 event, he received a mysterious ‘gift’ from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The gift was reportedly ‘a black lacquered box’, but the contents of the box have never been publicly revealed. Like the contents of the ‘gift’ from Putin to Trump, the purpose of the Sberbank private jet’s trip to Florida from Moscow is also a mystery, even as the plan sits on the tarmac at Fort Lauderdale airport as of 1:30 a.m. EST on Sunday. According to the online flight records from 2019, the Gulfstream private jet departed from Fort Lauderdale 30 hours and 11 minutes after landing there, making another nonstop flight back to Sheremetyevo Alexander S. Pushkin International Airport (SVO) in Moscow.” http://web.archive.org/web/20200106153745/https://www.inquisitr.com/5821555/kremlin-bank-ceo-jet-florida-donald-trump †Herman (German) Gref: [“Sberbank, headed by Herman Gref, the other co-chair of Putin’s A.I. board, is also among the banks providing biometric services that feed into the Digital Profile System.” – Claims Journal (2019)] •Vedomosti (Russia)—Sberbank Invested in Facial Recognition Technology (11/17/2017) “Sberbank Recognizes a Customer by Sight: The Bank intends to provide biometric access to any of its services.” http://vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2017/11/17/742077-raspoznavaniya-lits (http://archive.is/sbLOR) [Translated] •Bloomberg—The Day Trump Came to Moscow: Oligarchs, Miss Universe and Nobu (12/21/2016) “Meeting with top group of Russian financiers, industrialists; They discussed a possible Trump Tower and inspected sites The last time Donald Trump made an appearance in Moscow was November 2013 for the Miss Universe contest he famously owned. It was a glittering event filled with carefully choreographed photographs and parties. Then another, more private, invitation arrived: Come to Nobu to meet more than a dozen of Russia’s top businessmen, including Herman Gref, the chief executive officer of state-controlled Sberbank PJSC, Russia’s biggest bank. Gref, who was President Vladimir Putin’s economy minister from 2000 to 2007, organized the meeting together with Aras Agalarov, the founder of Crocus Group, one of the country’s largest real-estate companies, which was hosting the beauty pageant at one of its concert halls.” http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-21/the-day-trump-came-to-moscow-oligarchs-miss-universe-and-nobu (http://archive.is/7X1bc) •NBC News—Putin Rival Ties Kushner Meeting to Kremlin Bankers (10/17/2017) “A prominent exiled Russian oligarch said in an exclusive interview with NBC News that he is nearly certain Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to collaborate with the Trump campaign, and that he believes a top Russian banker was not ‘acting on his own behalf’ when he held a controversial meeting with Jared Kushner last December. The pointed remarks come from a longtime Putin rival, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil executive who was Russia's richest man before he was imprisoned and exiled by the Kremlin. ’I am almost convinced that Putin's people have tried to influence the U.S. election in some way’, Khodorkovsky told MSNBC’s Ari Melber in his first U.S. television interview since Trump took office. [...] His former head of human resources, Sergey Gorkov, now runs a Kremlin bank and met with Kushner in December last year. The U.S. has accused Gorkov's bank of providing cover for Russian spies. Khodorkovsky says Gorkov was a ‘fine employee’ who ‘carries out orders’, suggesting the banker would not have been acting alone in meeting with a senior figure of the incoming Trump administration. ‘I have no doubt that he wouldn’t do anything on his own behalf’, Khodorkovsky said. Khodorkovsky also said he believes Gorkov's orders come from either Andrey Kostin or Herman [German] Gref, who both run Kremlin-backed banks that were sanctioned by the Obama administration.” http://web.archive.org/web/20190706131958/https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/putin-rival-ties-kushner-meeting-kremlin-bankers-n811631[“Hermann Gräf, better known as Herman Gref*, is a Russian politician and businessman. He was the Minister of Economics and Trade of Russia from May 2000 to September 2007. He is the CEO and chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, the largest Russian bank.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Gref] •Fast Company—Russia’s Largest Bank Just Launched a State-Of-The-Art Coding School to Ease Dependence on Western Tech; Sberbank, which is currently under U.S. sanctions and whose CEO [Gref] has ties to Trump, launched School 21 in Moscow last week. (11/30/2018) “The biggest bank in Russia, which has been under U.S. sanctions since 2014, just launched a state-of-the-art coding school in Moscow that aims to train thousands of world-class software engineers in the arts of cybersecurity, gaming, and the latest AI technology for years to come. School 21, which operates under the umbrella of Ecole 42, a global pioneer in IT education backed by French billionaire Xavier Niel, is wholly owned by Sberbank. It is free, open to aspiring coders from 18 to 30 years old, and has 21 levels of proficiency. The school is highly competitive—its inaugural program has a class of 500 students out of more than 85,000 applicants, and the plan is to scale up to 2,500 a year in the long term, according to Business FM radio station. Sberbank told Fast Company that it plans to run two more application cycles next year, one in the winter and one in the spring, and that it might open a second office in St. Petersburg. The school’s launch is raising concerns about Russia training thousands of highly skilled cyber specialists at a time when the United States is expanding its sanctions against Russian entities, including Sberbank-xbacked properties, and amid heightened tensions in Europe last week over a naval skirmish between Russian and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait. It also comes against the backdrop of the Russian government’s disinformation efforts in elections around the globe, which the Kremlin has vehemently denied. In addition, Sberbank has been in the spotlight due to the history of high-level connections between the bank’s leadership, the Russian government and Donald Trump’s associates before he became U.S. president. It was bank chairman Herman Gref who set up Trump’s meeting with Russian businessmen during the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 in Moscow, an event which Sberbank co-sponsored, while Trump was exploring building a Trump Tower in Moscow. Trump’s hotel plans are making headlines again this week due to the plea deal that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen negotiated with the Mueller probe–Cohen admitted that he lied when he previously claimed that the deal fell through in January 2016, now conceding that talks for a Trump Tower in Moscow continued up until June 2016.’ Russia’s largest bank just launched a state-of-the-art coding school to ease dependence on Western tech; Sberbank, which is currently under U.S. sanctions and whose CEO has ties to Trump, launched School 21 in Moscow last week.” http://web.archive.org/web/20181201002817/https://www.fastcompany.com/90274333/russias-largest-bank-just-launched-a-coding-school-to-ease-dependence-on-western-tech •Claims Journal—Vladimir Putin Wants Everyone to Love the Way He Watches Them (10/22/2019) “Officials in Moscow have spent the last few years methodically assembling one of the most comprehensive video-surveillance operations in the world. The public-private network of as many as 200,000 cameras records 1.5 billion hours of footage a year that can be accessed by 16,000 government employees, intelligence officers and law-enforcement personnel. Now the entire system is about to be equipped with what City Hall is billing as some of the most advanced facial-recognition software outside of China, claiming it will be more accurate and easier to search than London’s older, bigger network. The upgrade will dramatically expand a pilot program that led to the capture of as many as 10 wanted criminals a month either at major public events or inside the city’s warren of 269 metro stations. Moscow’s embrace of the technology, which the West is increasingly curtailing in response to public pressure, is being challenged in courts on political and legal grounds by opponents of President Vladimir Putin. But the monitoring tool is just one of several Russia is deploying, including mandatory recordings of all cellular calls. Many of the initiatives are based on recent advances in artificial intelligence, a science Putin sees as the ticket to global domination for whichever nation masters it first. Putin and lieutenants led by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin say measures such as geolocating every active in the country, creating ‘digital profiles’ of each adult and collating online complaints against authorities are all necessary to ensure public safety and improve services. They’re betting most voters will accept further privacy curbs like the facial-recognition rollout in exchange for safer streets and greater convenience in their daily lives. ‘We’re conducting experiments in schools, clinics, hospitals and in transport to introduce this technology, which, of course, will facilitate the work of a huge number of people and make these industries more efficient’, Sobyanin told Putin at a meeting on artificial intelligence earlier this year. While so-called authoritarian tech, from automatic people trackers to online censorship bots, has triggered a worldwide debate about the proper balance between governing and surveilling, Moscow has so far made a better case for Big Brother than most cities. Russia’s capital ranks No. 1 among 40 metropolises in the latest UN survey of ‘e-government effectiveness in the delivery of public services’. London, by comparison, is fourth, Shanghai 11th and New York 14th. [...] Sberbank, headed by Herman Gref, the other co-chair of Putin’s A.I. board, is also among the banks providing biometric services that feed into the Digital Profile System. The support of Gref is vital to the success of the program because Sberbank serves as a payment agent for most household bills in addition to safeguarding almost half of the country’s savings. Gref is fond of repeating the mantra ‘big data is the new oil’, but privacy experts say the concentration of so much personal information in a single database will make Russia an ideal target for identity thieves, not unlike Equifax Inc. The U.S. consumer-scorer was breached in 2017, exposing the credit histories of more than 145 million people. (Sberbank itself was the victim of a data leak affecting as many as 60 million clients, Kommersant reported this month. The bank said the incident impacted just 5,000 holders of its credit cards.) Potentially more worrisome in a country routinely accused of harassing the political opposition is that the new database could be a precursor of the kind of ‘social credit’ system China is developing. It’s a name-and-shame way to keep tabs on the behavior of the population by issuing grades, with demerits applied for things like smoking or circulating whatever’s deemed fake news. In 2016, the company launched the FindFace website and application. With the help of it, it was possible to find a person’s profile in VKontakte in a few seconds. The launch of the ‘innovation dating service’, as the company initially positioned it, provoked a series of scandals—users deanonimized not only fellow travelers in the subway, but porn actresses and rally participants, the technology was used even by the Bellingcat investigation team. And then they told about the application in the ‘Wait for me’ program on Channel One, and NtechLab, as Kabakov said, began to receive ‘five offers of cooperation per day’. Now the founders explain that FindFace was just a showcase that helped pitch technology. For example, with help from FindFace German [Herman] Gref† deanonimized his secretary within one second after being introduced to the algorithm, according to someone familiar with the head of Sberbank. But in 2018 both the site and the FindFace application were unexpectedly closed. This had to be done because of possible complaints, including from VKontakte, says one of the interlocutors of The Bell. Spending time and money on the courts did not make sense; the founders of NtechLab already understood that they would not make money on recognizing pretty girls.” http://web.archive.org/web/20191024034256/https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/international/2019/10/22/293704.htm •The Moscow Times—Russia To Grant Police Access to Bank Customers’ Biometric Data (12/19/2017) “Russia’s police and intelligence services will gain access to bank customers’ biometric data without their consent under new legislation making its way through the State Duma. Russia’s Communications Ministry and the Central Bank are overseeing a pilot project that will use personal biometric data to remotely verify bank account applications by late 2018. The Rostelecom state telecoms provider will operate the project, despite widespread concerns over state surveillance, data storage and privacy rights. A state deputy co-authoring the bill was cited as saying that ‘law enforcement officers will not have unlimited access to the system’ and that data would only be provided after official requests, the Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. According to the draft bill, Rostelecom would be required to share bank customers’ biometric data without their consent with Russia’s Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service (FSB). The data collected will include facial images and voice recordings, and may be expanded to iris recognition, palm and fingerprint scanning, according to Rostelecom. ‘If a person is law abiding then they will have no reason to worry’, Elman Mekhtiev, the vice-president of the Russian Association of Banks, was cited as saying by Vedomosti.” http://web.archive.org/web/20191121205917/https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2017/12/19/russia-to-grant-police-access-to-bank-customers-biometric-data-a59987 •The Moscow Times—Moscow Arrests 42 Suspects Using New Facial Recognition Technology in Metro Stations (5/24/2018) “A pilot project implementing facial recognition technology in Moscow has reportedly led to the arrests of 42 suspects in a month. Moscow has ramped up video surveillance ahead of the FIFA World Cup that kicks off in three weeks, including with facial recognition capabilities at metro stations capable of identifying 20 faces per second. Around 50,000 photographs of wanted suspects have been uploaded into the Moscow metro system, the state-owned Sberbank vice president Stanislav Kuznetsov told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. ‘As a result, 42 repeat offenders were detained at four metro stations in a month,’ Kuznetsov was quoted as saying. He said Sberbank CEO German Gref plans to discuss expanding the facial-recognition system beyond four metro stations with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin at the annual economic forum underway in St. Petersburg. Sberbank acquired a stake in the VisionLabs facial recognition company last fall to create a ‘unique biometric identifier’ involving face, voice and retina identification.” http://themoscowtimes.com/news/moscow-arrests-42-suspects-using-new-facial-recognition-technology-in-metro-stations-61567 (http://archive.is/qU8WU) •The Bell (Russia)—The Russian Elite is Jostling to Solve Putin’s “2024 Problem” (7/20/2019) “This week we look at how a senior official wants President Vladimir Putin stay in power after his current term ends in 2024. We also explain why protests over the exclusion of independent candidates from local elections is a sign of a system under strain, and how Moscow is set to roll-out one of the world’s biggest face recognition systems. The Russian elite is jostling to solve Putin’s ‘2024 problem’ The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, this week publicly offered a solution to Putin’s ‘2024 problem’—what to do about the constitutional limit on two consecutive presidential terms. Volodin, who was previously oversaw domestic politics in the Kremlin, published an article (Rus) in the State Duma’s official magazine laying out his idea for changing the constitution to give parliament more authority. [...] Why the world should care: The Russian elite is increasingly obsessed with the ‘2024 problem’, and jostling within the elite is already well underway. At present, a variation of Volodin’s plan seems the most likely outcome. [...] Protests over Moscow’s local elections highlight cracks in the system: If the Kremlin wants to keep Putin in power beyond 2024, it will have to improve the functioning of its political management machine. Anger this week over local elections in the capital revealed how the system is faltering: the authorities’ ineptitude turned the vote—in which no one was interested—into a trigger for repeated demonstrations† in downtown Moscow. [...] Why the world should care: The Kremlin’s political management machine is coping less well with each passing election, and their failure in Moscow significant—in a crisis, the country’s fate will be decided in the capital. This is a bad sign ahead of the 2021 Duma elections, and a blow to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, whose name appears in discussions of presidential candidates in 2024. Moscow is set to install a state-of-the-art face recognition system: While paranoid internet users across the world call for a boycott of FaceApp, the Russian app that generates an image of an elderly you, Moscow City Hall is building the world’s largest face recognition system. Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, will take part in development and has already collected the biometrical data of tens of millions of Russians. - Moscow City Hall announced a tender this year for 105,000 video cameras with face recognition software. As of now, only 1,500 have been installed, but the police have already used them to identify and arrest about 100 criminals. According to The Bell’s calculations, the new system will cost no less than $50 million, a price tag that the city can easily afford. - There are three main bidders: Ntechlab, which was founded by people close to the Presidential Administration and two companies in which Sberbank is a shareholder: Speech Technology Center and VisionLabs. - Market sources say that Moscow’s face recognition system, once rolled out, will only be comparable in size with systems already in place in China. - Sberbank looks well placed to provide the raw data to make the system work. Since last year, the bank has been collecting biometric data from its clients (93 million people), and in December, CEO German [Herman] Gref said they already have data from ‘millions of people’. Why the World Should Care: Concentrating resources could mean Russia becomes the world’s number two player in face recognition systems. Remember this when you visit Moscow, walk the city’s streets and see the mounted cameras on every building.” http://web.archive.org/web/20190801101206/http://thebell.io/en/the-russian-elite-is-jostling-to-solve-putin-s-2024-problem [“A more advanced operation could use the full suite of services utilized by companies to track political attitudes on social media across all congressional districts, analyze who is most likely to vote and where, and then launch, almost instantly, a customized campaign at a highly localized level to discourage voting in the most vulnerable districts. Such a campaign, due to its highly personalized structure, would likely have significant impact on voting behavior.” – Brookings Institution (2008)] •Brookings Institution—Weapons of the Weak: Russia and AI-driven Asymmetric Warfare (2018) “‘Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.’ – Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2017 Speaking to Russian students on the first day of the school year in September 2017, Putin squarely positioned Russia in the technological arms race for artificial intelligence (AI). Putin’s comment signaled that, like China and the United States, Russia sees itself engaged in direct geopolitical competition with the world’s great powers, and AI is the currency that Russia is betting on. [...] Currently, Moscow is pursuing investments in at least two directions: select conventional military and defense technologies where the Kremlin believes it can still hold comparative advantage over the West and high-impact, low-cost asymmetric warfare to correct the imbalance between Russia and the West in the conventional domain. The former—Russia’s development and use of AI-driven military technologies and weapons—has received significant attention. AI has the potential to hyperpower Russia’s use of disinformation... And unlike in the conventional military space, the United States and Europe are ill-equipped to respond to AI-driven asymmetric warfare in the information space. The latter—the implications of AI for asymmetric political warfare—remains unexplored. Yet, such nonconventional tools—cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, political influence, and illicit finance—have become a central tenet of Russia’s strategy toward the West and one with which Russia has been able to project power and influence beyond its immediate neighborhood. In particular, AI has the potential to hyperpower Russia’s use of disinformation—the intentional spread of false and misleading information for the purpose of influencing politics and societies. And unlike in the conventional military space, the United States and Europe are ill-equipped to respond to AI-driven asymmetric warfare (ADAW) in the information space. Russian Information Warfare at Home and Abroad: Putin came to power in 2000, and since then, information control and manipulation has become a key element of the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign policy. At home, this has meant repression of independent media and civil society, state control of traditional and digital media, and deepening government surveillance. For example, Russia’s surveillance system, SORM (System of Operative-Search Measures) allows the FSB (Federal Security Service) and other government agencies to monitor and remotely access ISP servers and communications without the ISPs’ knowledge. In 2016, a new package of laws, the so-called Yarovaya amendments, required telecom providers, social media platforms, and messaging services to store user data for three years and allow the FSB access to users’ metadata and encrypted communications. While there is little known information on how Russian intelligence agencies are using these data, their very collection suggests that the Kremlin is experimenting with AI-driven analysis to identify potential political dissenters. The government is also experimenting with facial recognition technologies in conjunction with CCTV. Moscow alone has approximately 170,000 cameras, at least 5,000 of which have been outfitted with facial expression recognition technology from NTechLabs. Still, Moscow’s capacity to control and surveil the digital domain at home remains limited, as exemplified by the battle between the messaging app Telegram and the Russian government in early 2018. Telegram, one of the few homegrown Russian tech companies, refused to hand over its encryption keys to the FSB in early 2018. What followed was a haphazard government attempt to ban Telegram by blocking tens of millions of IP addresses, which led to massive disruptions in unrelated services, such as cloud providers, online games, and mobile banking apps. Unlike Beijing, which has effectively sought to censor and control the internet as new technologies have developed, Moscow has not been able to implement similar controls preemptively. The result is that even a relatively small company like Telegram is able to outmaneuver and embarrass the Russian state. Despite such setbacks, however, Moscow seems set to continue on a path toward ‘digital authoritarianism’—using its increasingly unfettered access to citizens’ personal data to build better microtargeting capabilities that enhance social control, censor behavior and speech, and curtail counter-regime activities. Under Putin, Cold War-era ‘active measures’—overt or covert influence operations aimed at influencing public opinion and politics abroad—have been revived and adapted to the digital age. Externally, Russian information warfare (informatsionaya voyna) has become part and parcel of Russian strategic thinking in foreign policy. Moscow has long seen the West as involved in an information war against it—a notion enshrined in Russia’s 2015 national security strategy, which sees the United States and its allies as seeking to contain Russia by exerting ‘informational pressure…’ in an ‘intensifying confrontation in the global information arena.’ Under Putin, Cold War-era ‘active measures’—overt or covert influence operations aimed at influencing public opinion and politics abroad—have been revived and adapted to the digital age. Information warfare (or information manipulation) has emerged as a core component of a broader influence strategy. At the same time, the line between conventional (or traditional) and nonconventional (or asymmetric) warfare has blurred in Russian military thinking. ‘The erosion of the distinction between war and peace, and the emergence of a grey zone’ has been one of the most striking developments in the Russian approach to warfare, according to Chatham House’s Keir Giles. Warfare, from this perspective, exists on a spectrum in which ‘political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures’ are used to lay the groundwork for last resort military operations. The importance of information warfare on the spectrum of war has increased considerably in 21st century warfare, according to contemporary Russian military thought. Maskirovka, the Soviet/Russian term for the art of deception and concealment in both military and nonmilitary operations, is a key concept that figures prominently into Russian strategic thinking. The theory is broader than the narrow definition of military deception. In the conventional military domain, it includes the deployment of decoys, camouflage, and misleading information to deceive the enemy on the battlefield. The use of ‘little green men,’ or unmarked soldiers and mercenaries, in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 is one example of maskirovka in military practice. So is the use of fake weapons and heavy machinery: one Russian company is producing an army of inflatable missiles, tanks, and jets that appear real in satellite imagery. Maskirovka, as a theory and operational practice, also applies to nonmilitary asymmetric operations. Modern Russian disinformation and cyber attacks against the West rely on obfuscation and deception in line with the guiding principles of maskirovka. During the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, for example, Russian citizens working in a troll factory in St. Petersburg, known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), set up fake social media accounts pretending to be real Americans. These personas then spread conspiracy theories, disinformation, and divisive content meant to amplify societal polarization by pitting opposing groups against each other. The IRA troll factory itself, while operating with the knowledge and support of the Kremlin and the Russian intelligence services, was founded and managed by proxy: a Russian oligarch known as ‘Putin’s chef,’ Yevgeny Prigozhin. Concord, a catering company controlled by Prigozhin, was the main funder and manager of the IRA, and it went to great lengths to conceal the company’s involvement, including the setting up a web of fourteen bank accounts to transfer funding to the IRA. Such obfuscation tactics were designed to conceal the true source and goals of the influence operations in the United Stated while allowing the Kremlin to retain plausible deniability if the operations were uncovered—nonconventional maskirovka in practice. On the whole, Russia’s limited financial resources, the shift in strategic thinking toward information warfare, and the continued prevalence of maskirovka as a guiding principle of engagement, strongly suggest that in the near term, Moscow will ramp up the development of AI-enabled information warfare. Russia will not be the driver or innovator of these new technologies due its financial and human capital constraints. But, as it has already done in its attacks against the West, it will continue to co-opt existing commercially available technologies to serve as weapons of asymmetric warfare. AI-driven Asymmetric Warfare: The Kremlin’s greatest innovation in its information operations against the West has not been technical. Rather, Moscow’s savviness has been to recognize that: (1) ready-made commercial tools and digital platforms can be easily weaponized; and (2) digital information warfare is cost-effective and high-impact, making it the perfect weapon of a technologically and economically weak power. AI-driven asymmetric warfare (ADAW) capabilities could provide Russia with additional comparative advantage. Digital information warfare is cost-effective and high-impact, making it the perfect weapon of a technologically and economically weak power. U.S. government and independent investigations into Russia’s influence campaign against the United States during the 2016 elections reveal the low cost of that effort. Based on publicly available information, we know that the Russian effort included: the purchase of ads on Facebook (estimated cost $100,000)27 and Google (approximate cost $4,700), set up of approximately 36,000 automated bot accounts on Twitter, operation of the IRA troll farm (estimated cost $240,000 over the course of two years), an intelligence gathering trip carried out by two Russian agents posing as tourists in 2014 (estimated cost $50,000), production of misleading or divisive content (pictures, memes, etc.), plus additional costs related to the cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. In sum, the total known cost of the most high-profile influence operation against the United States is likely around one million dollars. The relatively low level of investment produced high returns. On Facebook alone, Russian linked content from the IRA reached 125 million Americans. This is because the Russian strategy relied on ready-made tools designed for commercial online marketing and advertising: the Kremlin simply used the same online advertising tools that companies would use to sell and promote its products and adapted them to spread disinformation. Since the U.S. operation, these tools and others have evolved and present new opportunities for far more damaging but increasingly low-cost and difficult-to-attribute ADAW operations. Three threat vectors in particular require immediate attention. First, advances in deep learning are making synthetic media content quick, cheap, and easy to produce. AI-enabled audio and video manipulation, so-called ‘deep fakes,’ is already available through easy-to-use apps such as Face2Face, which allows for one person’s expressions to be mapped onto another face in a target video. Video to Video Synthesis can synthesize realistic video based a baseline of inputs. Other tools can synthesize realistic photographs of AI-rendered faces, reproduce videos and audio of any world leader, and synthesize street scenes to appear in a different season. Using these tools, China recently unveiled an AI made news anchor. As the barriers of entry for accessing such tools continue to decrease, their appeal to low-resource actors will increase. Whereas most Russian disinformation content has been static (e.g., false news stories, memes, graphically designed ads), advances in learning AI will turn disinformation dynamic (e.g. video, audio). Because audio and video can easily be shared on smart phones and do not require literacy, dynamic disinformation content will be able to reach a broader audience in more countries. For example, in India, false videos shared through Whatsapp incited riots and murders. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Whatsapp (owned by Facebook) is an end-to-end encrypted messaging platform, which means that content shared via the platform is basically unmonitored and untraceable. The ‘democratization of disinformation’ will make it difficult for governments to counter AI-driven disinformation. Advances in machine learning are producing algorithms that ‘continuously learn how to more effectively replicate the appearance of reality,’ which means that ‘deep fakes cannot easily be detected by other algorithms.’ Russia, China, and others could harness these new publicly available technologies to undermine Western soft power or public diplomacy efforts around the world. Debunking or attributing such content will require far more resources than the cost of production, and it will be difficult if not impossible to do so in real time. Second, advances in affective computing and natural language processing will make it easier to manipulate human emotions and extract sensitive information without ever hacking an email account. In 2017, Chinese researchers created an ‘emotional chatting machine’ based on data users shared on Weibo, the Chinese social media site. As AI gains access to more personal data, it will become increasingly customized and personalized to appeal to and manipulate specific users. Coupled with advances in natural learning processing, such as voice recognition, this means that affective systems will be able to mimic, respond to, and predict human emotions expressed through text, voice, or facial expressions. Some evidence suggests that humans are quite willing to form personal relationships, share deeply personal information, and interact for long periods of time with AI designed to form relationships. These systems could be used to gather information from high value targets—such as intelligence officers or political figures—by exploiting their vices and patterns of behavior. Advances in affective computing and natural language processing will make it easier to manipulate human emotions and extract sensitive information without ever hacking an email account. Third, deep fakes and emotionally manipulative content will be able to reach the intended audience with a high degree of precision due to advances in content distribution networks. ‘Precision propaganda’ is the set of interconnected tools that comprise an ‘ecosystem of services that enable highly targeted political communications that reach millions of people with customized messages.’ The full scope of this ecosystem, which includes data collection, advertising platforms, and search engine optimization, aims to parse out audiences in granular detail and identify new receptive audiences will be ‘supercharged’ by advances in AI. The content that users see online is the end product of an underlying multi-billion dollar industry that involves thousands of companies that work together to assess individuals’ preferences, attitudes, and tastes to ensure maximum efficiency, profitability, and real-time responsiveness of content delivery. Russian operations (as far as we know), relied on the most basic of these tools. But, as Ghosh and Scott suggest, a more advanced operation could use the full suite of services utilized by companies to track political attitudes on social media across all congressional districts, analyze who is most likely to vote and where, and then launch, almost instantly, a customized campaign at a highly localized level to discourage voting in the most vulnerable districts. Such a campaign, due to its highly personalized structure, would likely have significant impact on voting behavior. Once the precision of this distribution ecosystem is paired with emotionally manipulative deep fake content delivered by online entities that appear to be human, the line between fact and fiction will cease to exist. And Hannah Arendt’s prediction of a world in which there is no truth and no trust may still come to pass.“ http://www.brookings.edu/research/weapons-of-the-weak-russia-and-ai-driven-asymmetric-warfare (http://archive.is/mMlyN)
Broderick Stephen "Steve" Harvey[2][3] (born January 17, 1957), nicknamed "Mr. Peanut Brain", is an American comedian, businessman, and entertainer. He hosts The Steve Harvey Morning Show, Family Feud, Celebrity Family Feud, the Miss Universe competition (since 2015) and Fox's New Year's Eve (since 2017). Harvey began his career as a comedian. He did standup comedy in the early 1980s and hosted Showtime at the Apollo and The Steve Harvey Show on The WB. He was later featured in The Original Kings of Comedy after starring in the Kings of Comedy Tour. He performed his last standup show in 2012. Harvey is the host of both Family Feud and Celebrity Family Feud which he has done since 2010. He has also hosted Little Big Shots, Little Big Shots Forever Young, and Steve Harvey’s Funderdome. As an author, he has written four books including his bestseller Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which was published in March 2009. In 2017, Harvey founded Steve Harvey Global, an entertainment company that houses his production company East 112 and various other ventures. He launched an African version of the Family Feud and also invested in the HDNet takeover along with Anthem Sports and Entertainment. He and his wife Marjorie are the founders of The Steve and Marjorie Harvey Foundation, a non profit organization focused on youth education. He is a six-time Daytime Emmy Award winner, two-time Marconi Award winner, and a 14-time NAACP Image Award winner in various categories. Early Life Harvey was born on January 17, 1957,[4][5] in Welch, West Virginia, and is the son of Jesse Harvey, a coal miner, and Eloise Vera.[6] His first name is Broderick, named after actor Broderick Crawford of the TV series Highway Patrol.[2] Harvey's family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, living on East 112th Street, which was renamed Steve Harvey Way in 2015.[7] He graduated from Glenville High School in 1974.[7] Shortly after high school, he attended Kent State University and West Virginia University and is a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Career Early career and comedy Harvey has been a boxer, an autoworker, an insurance salesman, a carpet cleaner, and a mailman.[6][8][9] He first performed stand-up comedy on October 8, 1985, at the Hilarities Comedy Club in Cleveland, Ohio. In the late '80s, Harvey was homeless for three years.[10] He slept in his 1976 Ford when not performing gigs that provided a hotel, and he showered at gas stations or swimming pool showers.[11] Rich and Becky Liss helped Harvey during this time with a contract for carpet cleaning and credit at a travel agency.[12] 1990–2009; Move to television and film Harvey was a finalist in the Second Annual Johnnie Walker National Comedy Search performing on April 16, 1990, eventually leading to a long stint as host of It's Showtime at the Apollo, succeeding Mark Curry in that role. His success as a stand-up comedian led to a starring role on the short-lived ABC show Me and the Boys in 1994.[13] He would later star on the WB network show, The Steve Harvey Show, which ran from 1996 to 2002.[13] While popular, the show never achieved critical acclaim outside of the African-American community.[14] In 1997, Harvey continued his work in stand-up comedy, performing on the Kings of Comedy tour along with Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, and Bernie Mac. The tour became the highest grossing comedy tour in history, grossing $18 million its first year and $19 million its second.[15] The comedy act would later be put together into a film by Spike Lee called The Original Kings of Comedy.[16] That title was also used as the name of his comedy and variety television show (later renamed Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge), which aired on The WB network from 2003 until 2005.[17] Harvey is the host of The Steve Harvey Morning Show, a weekday morning radio program he has hosted since 2000.[18] It was originally syndicated through Radio One Inc. from September 2000 until May 2005.[citation needed] As of 2019, the show is syndicated through the United States.[18] He had appeared in the 2003 movie The Fighting Temptations alongside Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé Knowles.[19] The same year he played the role of Clarence Johnson in the film Love Don't Cost a Thing.[20] In 2014 he had roles in the films Johnson Family Vacation and You Got Served;[21] and, in 2005, he co-starred in the movie Racing Stripes as the voice of Buzz.[22] In 2006, Harvey released the stand-up special Steve Harvey: Don't Trip... He Ain't Through with Me Yet directed by Leslie Small. The special was filmed at MegaFest with Harvey not using profanity during the show.[23] In 2008, Harvey hosted the Disney Dreamers Academy, a teen-focused personal and professional enrichment event that took place January 17–20, 2008, at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.[24] Harvey released the book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man in 2009. The book is about how men think about women and relationships.[25] Based on the book, the 2012 film Think Like a Man, is an ensemble romantic comedy depicting characters taking advice on dating from the book.[26] The hardcover version spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, 23 of those weeks at No. 1.[27] 2010 to 2016; Family Feud and other ventures Harvey began hosting Family Feud in September 2010.[6][28] The show has seen improved ratings under Harvey,[29] and he has surpassed every previous Feud host to date in length of consecutive tenures.[30] Harvey also hosts Celebrity Family Feud, where celebrities compete for a chance to donate up to $25,000 to their favorite charity. The show airs during the summer on ABC.[31] On August 2, 2012, Harvey performed his final stand-up act at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, ending a 27-year career as a stand-up comedian. The two-hour performance was broadcast live on Pay-Per-View. “The road to this final show has been an amazing journey, doing stand-up for the past 27 years, and I can’t thank fans enough after reflecting on all those years on stage,” he said.[32][33] The same year, Harvey debuted a self-titled syndicated talk show produced by Endemol and distributed by NBCUniversal Television Distribution at the NBC Tower in Chicago.[34] In 2013, Harvey became the first double host nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award, receiving nominations for both Outstanding Talk Show Host and Outstanding Game Show Host.[35] He was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[36] The following year, Harvey launched a new dating website called Delightful. It is a joint venture with IAC with Harvey supplying articles and videos for the site.[37] In December 2015, Harvey hosted the Miss Universe 2015 pageant in Las Vegas. Upon announcing the final results, he mistakenly named the first runner-up, Miss Colombia (Ariadna Gutiérrez) as the winner. A few minutes after she was crowned, Harvey announced that he had read the results incorrectly and that Miss Philippines (Pia Wurtzbach) was the new Miss Universe.[38] He apologized to Wurtzbach outside the venue and later tweeted an apology to both contestants.[39][40][41] Harvey also hosted the Miss Universe 2016 pageant in the Philippines on January 30, 2017, telling the Miss Universe Organization that he wanted to personally apologize to the Filipinos for the incident that occurred in the last Miss Universe pageant he hosted.[42] He returned as host for the Miss Universe 2017 pageant in Las Vegas on November 26, 2017 and the Miss Universe 2018 pageant in Thailand on December 17, 2018.[43] In January 2016, Harvey gave a motivational speech to audience members after the taping of an episode of Family Feud. He theme of the speech was for people to embrace the skills they were born with. He references embracing the gifts with jumping from a cliff and relying on the parachute (those gifts) to help you.[44] The speech was the motivation for the book Leap: Take the Leap of Faith to Achieve Your Life of Abundance, published by Harvey in 2016.[45] In October 2016, it was announced that Harvey would host two revival specials of Showtime at the Apollo for Fox.[46] In November 2016, the Steve Harvey talk show was cancelled, and it was announced that Harvey had reached a deal with IMG to produce a new syndicated talk show in Los Angeles with NBCUniversal. The new series, Steve, premiered in September 2017, and was described as having more of a celebrity and comedy oriented format with a larger amount of creative control held by Harvey, as opposed to the previous program's larger focus on human interest subjects. To facilitate the new series, production of Harvey's radio show and Family Feud were relocated to L.A.[47][48] Harvey is the co-creator of Little Big Shots, a series launched in 2016 and executive produced by him and Ellen DeGeneres.[49] The series features children demonstrating talents and engaging in conversation with Harvey. Harvey hosted the show until 2019.[50] 2017 to present; Steve Harvey Global Harvey united all of his businesses under Steve Harvey Global (SHG) in 2017.[51] Brands under SHG include East One Twelve, Harvey's in-house production company that is used to develop digital content, films, and television. The company also owns the rights for international versions of Family Feud,[52] of which an African version of the show was announced to begin in 2020.[53] He also launched the Sand and Soul Festival in 2017. The event has been held yearly and features live music, comedy, and a question and answers session with Harvey and his wife Marjorie.[54] He also launched Harvey Events, a special events company led by his daughter Morgan Hawthorne and son-in-law Kareem Hawthorne. It has produced events such as the FroRibbean Fest in Atlanta in 2018.[55] In 2017, Harvey began hosting a New Year's Eve special from Times Square for Fox (which, like his talk show, would be produced in partnership with IMG).[56] Two days before the broadcast, Harvey was ordained in the state of New York so he could officiate an on-air wedding between Keven Undergaro and Maria Menounos during the special.[57] The special was Fox's most-watched New Year's Eve broadcast to date.[58] In 2019, Harvey announced the launch of a learning hub called Vault.[59] He also spoke at the first Vault conference held in Los Angeles.[60] He also invested in the takeover of HDNet along with Anthem Sports & Entertainment. Bibliography 2009, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man 2010, Straight Talk, No Chaser[62] 2014, Act Like a Success[63] 2016, Jump, Take the Leap of Faith to Achieve Your Life of Abundance Awards and Honors Four-time winner: NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002) Three-time winner: NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Comedy Series (as executive producestar of The Steve Harvey Show – 2000, 2001, 2002) 2001: NAACP Image Awards Entertainer of the Year 2007: Syndicated Personality/Show of the Year – Radio & Records magazine[64] 2011: BET Humanitarian Award – 2011 BET Awards[65] 2013: Favorite New Talk Show Host – 39th People's Choice Awards[66] 2013: Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame[6][67] 2013: Marconi Award winner – Network/Syndicated Personality of the Year Three-time winner: NAACP Image Awards Outstanding News/Talk/Info Series (as executive producehost of Steve Harvey – 2014, 2015, 2017)[68] 2014: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host – Family Feud[69] 2014: Daytime Emmy Award for Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Informative (as host/executive producer of Steve Harvey)[69] 2014: NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame inductee (Radio) 2015: East 112th Street in Cleveland renamed Steve Harvey Way[7] 2015: NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Host – Talk/Reality/Variety/News/Information[68] 2015: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Informative (as host/executive producer of Steve Harvey)[70] 2015: Marconi Award winner – Network/Syndicated Personality of the Year 2016: NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Host – Talk/Reality/Variety/News/Information 2016: NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Variety Series/Special (as host of Family Feud) 2016: Honorary Doctorate Degree Received at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama 2017: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host – Steve Harvey[71] 2017: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host – Family Feud[71] 2018: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host – Steve Controversies Politics In August 2011, on his radio show, Harvey called Cornel West and Tavis Smiley "Uncle Toms" because of their criticism of President Barack Obama.[73] Harvey later apologized for using the slur but maintained his criticism of West and Smiley.[74][75] In January 2017, Harvey was met with backlash from some in the African-American community for his decision to meet with then-President elect Donald Trump. He defended his decision, citing that it would help spark positive changes.[76] Comments about atheists Harvey has received criticism for a May 30, 2009, book interview he gave on Larry King Live, which was guest-hosted by Joy Behar.[77] During that interview, he asserted that women should not date atheists who, he claimed, have no "moral barometer." He opined that atheists are "idiot[s]" and stated that his usual response to discussions with atheists is to walk away.[78][79] Racial comments about Asian men In January 2017, Steve Harvey made jokes on Steve Harvey about Asian men, ridiculing the idea that any white woman or black woman would want to date them. "Excuse me, do you like Asian men?" he said, "No, thank you." He went on to add, "I don't even like Chinese food."[80] The remarks were met with criticism from Asian Americans, including New York politicians and author Eddie Huang.[81][82] For instance, Huang remarked about Harvey's hypocrisy in speaking about issues facing the black community while denigrating Asians.[82][83] Harvey apologized on his talk show and Twitter, saying: "I offer my humblest apology for offending anyone, particularly those in the Asian community. … It was not my intention, and the humor was not meant with any malice or disrespect whatsoever."[84] However, he also earlier said, "I ain’t been laughing that much over the past few days. They’re kinda beating me up on the internet right now for no reason. But, you know, that’s life, ain’t it?"[85] Comments about Flint water crisis In response to a caller from Flint, Michigan, who insulted the Cleveland Cavaliers after their loss to the Golden State Warriors, Harvey, a Cavaliers fan, told the caller to "go have yourself a nice glass of brown water!" in reference to the city's water crisis. The joke was criticized by, among others, Amariyanna Copeny and Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, who demanded a public apology. Harvey responded by saying, "The caller and I were talking trash about our teams and cities. Simply trash talking about sports. I made a joke directed at him, as he is from Flint, a city for which I have great affection and respect. So much so that I devoted a full hour on my daytime talk show to raising awareness for the Flint water crisis. … The caller laughed, as my joke was taken in the context it was offered." Philanthropy Harvey is the founder of the Steve & Marjorie Harvey Foundation, a philanthropic organization that provides youth outreach services.[88] The foundation hosts a yearly camp for fatherless children[89] and also partnered with Kent State University to provide scholarships to the school.[90] Harvey is also a partner with Walt Disney World Resort and Essence for the Disney Dreamers Academy, a yearly workshop at Walt Disney World for 100 students. Personal Life Harvey has been married three times and has seven children (four biological and three stepchildren). From his first marriage, to Marcia Harvey, he has two daughters (twins Brandi and Karli) and one son (Broderick Harvey Jr.).[92][8][93] From his second marriage, to Mary Shackelford, Harvey has another son named Wynton.[94][95][96] The couple divorced in November 2005.[97] In 2011, Collin County, Texas-based 199th District Court Judge Robert Dry expressed concern about Mary Harvey spreading false information about the divorce, with the judge suggesting that she had not been left materially destitute.[98][99] In June 2007, Harvey married Marjorie Bridges, who he says is responsible for making him a better man and changing his life. Marjorie Harvey is mother to three children (Morgan, Jason, and Lori [96]), all of whom Steve adopted. Steve and Marjorie have five grandchildren: three through Jason's marriage to his wife Amanda, one through Morgan's marriage to her husband Kareem, and one through Karli's marriage to husband Ben.[100] Through 2017, Harvey and his family divided their time between Atlanta, where his radio show was broadcast and Family Feud was recorded, and Chicago, where he hosted his talk show for NBCUniversal from the company's Chicago studios, although he would host his radio show there as well.[101] In 2018, Harvey moved his talk show, radio show, and Family Feud to Los Angeles.[102] Harvey is a Christian[103] and has attributed his success to his faith in God.[104] Harvey reports that he has followed a vegan diet for health reasons and has presented the rationale for his diet on his TV program.
[S11] Get to know the queens of Season 11 – Looks, performances, personality etc. (Pre-season version)
As promised, here is the first version of the ultimate guide to get to know this year's new queens. The final (and updated) one will be posted in /rupaulsdragrace after the cast announcement. The links, in general, are arranged based on what I recommend more / what I think is more relevant appearing first. If you find anything wrong or out of place, let me know so I can correct it. If there's content (new or not) that is not included here and you think should be, comment below. Same goes for the text entries: if you know relevant information that's left out or stuff I wrote that's incorrect, let me know. Take the opportunity to comment what are your favorite looks, which performances you recommend most, the most interesting interviews etc. . . .
What we Learned in the Russia Probe: March 25 - 31
Housekeeping:
I ran a survey last week on soft-paywalls, here are the results. I am going to continue linking to sources behind soft-paywalls if they broke the news.
Guide to the new format: Roughly organized by subject. For those that want quick highlights, skip the bullet points. Feedback welcome!
There’s a mailing list for notifications when this review is posted plus a link. To be added, send me PM with your email address. If you signed up already, check the spam folder just in case
If you’d like to donate a dollar a month, I’d appreciate it: patreon. Reviews will continue regardless.
On to the review...
Week of March 25 - 31: What we Learned in the Russia Probe
Mueller investigation
In a new court filing in the sentencing of attorney, and son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, Alex van der Zwaan, Mueller revealed the most direct connection between Trump and the Russians that we know of so far.
Van der Zwaan lied about his knowledge of direct communications between Rick Gates (cooperating with Mueller now) and a person identified as “Person A,” who is most likely Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik was an aide to Gates and Manafort in Ukraine, and is allegedly a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU. Gates apparently described Kilimnik as such, according to van der Zwaan. Mueller further states in the documents that Gates and Kilimnik continued to converse in 2016, meaning Gates (and Manafort) had contact with someone they knew to be a Russian intelligence officer during the Trump campaign and/or transition.
Remember, a GRU officer is also thought to be responsible for hacking the DNC, Guccifer 2.0.
We know Manafort had been in contact with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign. He met with “him at least twice and [asked] him to provide private briefings” about the election to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin.
Here's a simplified web of connections between Trump and Putin that includes Kilimnik that might help you visualize the relationships.
The FBI has in their possession a second report written by Christopher Steele that alleges Putin has sanctioned killings of Russians on U.S. soil.
RT founder and “Putin’s media czar” Mikhail Lesin’s body was found on Nov. 5, 2015 in his Washington, DC, hotel room. The official coroner's report “determined that he had died from blunt force injuries to the head and had also sustained blunt force injuries to his neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities.” A federal investigator stated his death was an accident; Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.”
The next day, Lesin was scheduled to meet with US Justice Department officials to talk about the inner workings of Russian state media.
Steele’s report states that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin. The were not supposed to kill him, but reportedly they went too far.
Three other independent sources have confirmed Steele’s reports to the FBI.
There are two other suspicious Russian deaths on U.S. soil (plus over a dozen on U.K. soil) that I know of. I’m sure there are more. Here are the ones that occurred in the states:
Sergei Krivov: Russian diplomat. Found just before 7 a.m. on Election Day 2016, lying dead on the floor of the Russian Consulate on the Upper East Side with head injury. Initial reports said he plunged from the roof of the consulate. Consular officials quickly changed their story, saying he’d suffered a heart attack in the security office, and died. The New York Medical Examiner concluded he died of internal bleeding due to a tumor.
Vitaly Churkin: Russian ambassador to the UN. Died at work in New York in 2017, by what Russian officials called a heart attack. The Medical Examiner said further study was needed, but was silenced by the US State Department.
Mueller is probing Russia contacts at that occurred at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
His team has specifically asked about an event attended by both Russia’s U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions and any discussions the two had at the Mayflower Hotel. They have also been asking about how and why “Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine.”
In attempting to obtain cooperation from Rick Gates, Mueller has reportedly been pushing him for information on Trump’s contacts with Russia rather than information on Manafort.
This indicates that (1) Trump remains a central target of the investigation, and (2) Mueller doesn’t need any help in putting Manafort away.
Infowars contributor & Trump campaign associate Ted Malloch was detained by the FBI as he arrived at the Boston airport from London. He was questioned about about Roger Stone and Julian Assange, and was subpoenaed to testify before Mueller's D.C. grand jury on April 13th.
“Malloch said the federal agents who stopped him and separated him from his wife “seemed to know everything about me” and warned him that lying to the FBI was a felony.”
Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian financier Erik Prince met with in the Seychelles in January 2017, has closer ties to Putin than previously known.
Six sources “say Dmitriev’s wife, Natalia Popova, is close friends with Putin’s younger daughter, Yekaterina Tikhonova, and also serves as the deputy director of her Innopraktika foundation.” This information renews concerns that the meeting was organized to set up a secret Kremlin backchannel with the Trump administration.
European counterintelligence officials have revealed that Papadopoulos had meetings with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, who is close to Putin, both before and after the election. They state that these meetings should concern the U.S.
Kammenos has also been photographed at events with Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. A month before Bannon met with Kammenos, Papadopoulos sent an email to Bannon and Flynn describing his contacts with the Greek Defense Minister.
Allowing Papadopoulos to meet with Kammenos, “At a minimum, they said, it showed the Trump campaign was naive in allowing a representative to meet with him.” A European counterintelligence official stated: “Either they knew officials were meeting with a [Ministry of Defense] in Athens that has a big black mark next to it due to Russian infiltration, or they didn’t know what meetings were being taken.”
George Nader, a political adviser to the UAE and now a cooperating witness, paid Trump fundraiser and former RNC chairman Elliott Broidy $2.5 million last April. Broidy then made large donations to U.S. lawmakers considering legislation targeting Qatar, UAE’s rival.
Sources say this was an effort to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar. It seems at least some of the donations paid off, as a month later GOP Rep. Ed Royce introduced legislation that would brand Qatar as a terrorist-supporting state.
The blockade of Qatar began in June of 2017, 3 months after Broidy received the payments.
“In October, Broidy also raised the issue of Qatar at the White House in meetings with Trump and senior aides.”
John Dowd, Trump’s former lawyer, reportedly spoke to Flynn and Manafort about Trump pardoning them for their crimes.
This could have been an attempt to influence their decision on whether to cooperate or not at a time when Mueller was offering leniency in exchange for information, suggesting that Trump and his lawyers were concerned about what the two men might reveal. Dowd has denied these discussions took place.
Manafort is reportedly betting on receiving a presidential pardon, not planning on cooperating with Mueller. The jet of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and Putin ally, arrived in the US (in New Jersey) within hours of a meeting between Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the former Russian military intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik. This occurred just weeks after Manafort offered "private briefings" about the Trump campaign to Deripaska.
Russian interference
CNN’s Jim Acosta reported on Twitter that NSC spokesman Michael Anton confirmed the administration has still not enforced any sanctions against Russian oligarchs, contradicting Raj Shah’s statement at Monday’s press briefing. There is already criticism that the announced sanctions do not touch Putin’s oligarchs or government officials. In response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and daughter in the U.K., the Trump administration has expelled 60 Russian diplomats/spies and ordered a Seattle Russian diplomatic compound to close. However, the State Department has confirmed original reporting by Julia Davis that the expelled diplomats/spies can be replaced by others, in a loophole that greatly reduces the impact of Trump’s actions.
Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent along with her father), is now conscious and talking.
A former Russian double agent has reported that he found out he was on a Kremlin hit list with Skripal, just weeks before Skripal was poisoned. Also on the list were several other ex-KGB agents, Bill Browder, and Christopher Steele. After months of trying to convince Trump to sign off on a plan to supply new U.S. weapons to Ukraine, National Security advisers finally got him to approve the plan. However, Trump told his aides not to publicly tout his decision because he didn’t want to anger Putin. The $380 million included in the omnibus spending bill for election security is likely not going to end up fixing key election security issues in all states.
The reason: the money is “going to be allocated based on the same population-based formula laid out in the 2002 Help America Vote Act.” This means that only 2 of the 13 states that use machines that lack an auditable paper trail (Arkansas and Delaware) could receive enough money to fully replace them. Most states won’t get more than 60% of the money required to to fully replace paperless systems.
Congress
Mark Zuckerberg has decided that he will testify before Congress, but is sending representatives to testify before the U.K. Parliament. He is going to be asked questions about Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, a company that harvested the data of 50 million users without their knowledge. House Dems have called for the FBI to investigate claims that Kushner leaked classified information to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Reportedly, the prince has said that Kushner revealed Saudi leaders who were disloyal to him, resulting in their arrest and perhaps torture.
Other
In 2015, the FBI looked into Trump plans in 2010 to build a hotel in Latvia with Putin supporter Igor Krutoy. The plans were abandoned after Krutoy and an associate were questioned by Latvian authorities as part of a major criminal inquiry there. The Guardian states that, “ Latvian investigators also examined secret recordings in which Trump was mentioned by a suspect.”
Krutoy attended the 2013 Moscow Miss Universe pageant and has written music for Emin Agalarov, whose father hosted the contest. The Agalarovs were involved in setting up the 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
Kushner has called newly-named National Security Adviser John Bolton on numerous occasions for advice and to brief him on key national security issues. To note… Ecuador has cut off Julian Assange’s internet connection at the embassy in London, “after his recent activity on social media decrying the arrest of a Catalan separatist politician.” Stormy Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview aired last Sunday. The new piece of information we learned is that Stormy and her daughter were threatened about Trump in a parking lot in 2011.
Trump’s employees have a habit of threatening people who cross him. A lawyer representing investors in Trump's casino after it went bankrupt in 2009 got a phone call saying “we’re going to your house for your wife and kids” if he didn’t stop “fucking with Mr. Trump.” The lawyer speculated the man on the other end of the phone was Trump’s bodyguard (not clear if this would have been Keith Schiller, but the man identified himself as “Carmine”...other people have suggested it was Trump himself). The FBI investigated and found that the call came from a pay phone across the street from the theater David Letterman films in, where Trump was appearing only 2 hours later.
Trump has lost arbitration to win back control of the former Trump International Tower & Hotel in Panama. The owners of the hotel evicted the Trump Organization earlier this month over allegations of "horrific" mismanagement. My twitter. Thanks for reading!
Over 50 former Trump models describe Trumps distrust of women, his numerous affairs and his habit of forcing himself onto women half his age while making unwanted sexual advances.
Trump defends military personnel accused of sexual assault and rape by putting the blame on the fact women are allowed to serve along men in the military.
"26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?" ― Donald Trump (Yes he did misspell the word assault in that tweet that's not a typo on my end.)
Donald Trump is accused of rape or sexual assault by numerous women over several decades. (This includes a case where a 13 year old accuses Trump of raping her while he was at a party hosted by personal friend and now convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein)
Trumps VP thinks the Disney movie Mulan was liberal propaganda created to convince women to join the military instead of staying home where they belong in order to weaken the military.
Trump tweets for people to check out the sex tape of a former Miss Universe contestant that he was previously accused of making racist comments against.
"She was married, I tried to fck her... I moved on her like a btch... When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p*ssy, you can do anything." Actual Trump quote caught on audio in 2005.
Some assorted things Trump has said to or about women before.
“You wouldn’t have your job if you weren’t beautiful.” “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” “I bet you make a great wife." “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.” “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her — wherever. ” “Heidi Klum. Sadly, she’s no longer a 10." "It must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.” "Her ass is too fat." "(Women) You have to treat 'em like shit." (Trump said this right before pouring wine down the back of female investigative journalist Marie Brenners dress in 1992 as payback for her writing a negative story about him. He later bragged about the event.)
The Shadows of Erik Prince: Peter Thiel and Trump-Russia
Erik Prince keeps popping up in the Trump-Russia investigation, but is always elusive. In this post I detail the many ways Prince associates, his “shadows”, have instigated the Trump-Russia scandal. Erik Prince's link to Palantir: Buzzy Krongrad In 2001, after terrorists flew planes into New York City’s World Trade Center, Prince called up Buzzy Krongard of the CIA (1) and attained Blackwater’s first contract with the US military, sending Prince right into the center of the War on Terror in Afghanistan (2) where he worked for both the CIA (3) and JSOC (4), the later commanded by General Stanley McChrystal (5). Krongard later joined the board of Blackwater in 2006, only to step down embroiled in a scandal the following year (6)(7). While working at the CIA, Buzzy created a subdivision called Information Technologies (8) that spawned In-Q-Tel, a CIA-backed venture capital firm seeking to invest in the rapidly advancing tech industry. Buzzy currently sits on its board of Trustees (9). In 2005, In-Q-Tel invested into Palantir (10).
Erik Prince’s and Palantir’s link to the Kremlin: Tiger Fund Julian Robertson has strong ties with Trent Lott and Dick DeVos, Erik Prince’s brother-in-law. All three sit on the Children’s Scholarship Fund board (1) and Robertson donates to Betsy DeVos’s the American Federation for Children Action Fund (2). Trent Lott himself gained a bit of infamy in 1997 when, along with Newt Gingrich, he slipped in a last minute tax break for Dick DeVos’ Amway into a contentious tax compromise bill. Four months later DeVos and his wife together donated $1 million to the GOP (3). In 2006, a Julian Robertson-seeded hedge fund run my Chase Coleman, Tiger Fund, invested in DST (4). By the end of 2009 DST would own 10% of Facebook (5), financed by the Russian-state-owned Gazprom, as revealed by the Paradise Papers (6).
A Moscow source said: "DST has the backing of the big boys at the top in the Kremlin, which is why it will go from strength to strength" (7).
Erik Prince’s ties to Michael Flynn: Stanley McChrystal In 2009, Palantir hired Stanley McChrystal’s top CDR, Douglas Philippone, who commanded multiple JSOC outstations in Afghanistan (1) that Prince had worked with. On July 2, 2010, McChrystal’s deputy of intelligence, Michael Flynn, put in an urgent request to purchase Palantir for McChrystals troops after two Palantir reps visited him (2 page 4), though by June 23, McChrystal had resigned from the military. Five days after his resignation, Tiger Fund invested into Facebook (3). In July, 2010 Eric Prince moved to Abu Dhabi and founded Reflex Response, R2 (4), financed by Prince Zayed himself, while McChrystal founded McChrystal Group and joined the board of Knowledge International (5), a licensed arms dealer with close ties to the UAE government with only two listed addresses: one the home of Stanley McChrystal in Virginia, and the other in Abu Dhabi (6). Three months later in Aspen McChrystal talked about his resignation during a private event. Julian Robertson was in attendance (7). As late as March 2015, Michael Flynn and Stanley McChrystal continued to work together to push Palantir (9), but with Palantir’s biggest pusher resigned from the military, Palantir needed another connection. Luckily Erik Prince and Julian Robertson had plenty. In 2010 Palantir hired two lobbyist, Trent Lott and John Breaux at Patton Boggs (8). By the time Palantir hired Lott and Breaux, Lott already had his own Russian connection. In 2006, the same year Tiger Fund was investing in a Russian tech company linked to Gazprom, Gazprom’s subsidiary, Gazprombank, hired the lobbying firm, Ketchum. On April 25, 2007 Ketchum emailed Trent Lott’s National Security Advisor, Mitch Waldman, about “Russia,” according to the vague FARA disclosure (10). By 2014, Trent Lott and John Breaux would snag Gazprombank as a client themselves (11). That same year, 2014, Flynn was fired from his military position. Soon enough he founded Flynn Intel Group registered at the same address at McChrystal’s home (12). December 2015, Michael Flynn visited Sergey Kislyak at Kislyak's home (13) and dined with Putin in Moscow (14) On September 20, 2016, Rohrabacher met with Flynn at Flynn Intel Group, a meeting probed by Mueller (15).
Patton Boggs and Erik Prince back-channels to Russia Patton Boggs and Erik Prince play a diverse and central roll in the Trump-Russia scandal- like P-B lawyer Don McGahn working on Trump’s campaign (1) and P-B working with Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen (2)- so I’ll break the connections down one at a time. Follow the two immediate links below and scroll through the years to find Patton-Boggs' (later Squire-Patton-Boggs) many lobbying clients. Patton-Boggs: 2010-2014 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000022176&year=2010 Squire-Patton-Boggs: 2014- https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000067299
Maricopa County Maricopa County hired Patton Boggs from 2010-2012. Maricopa County’s sherriff at the time was Joe Arapio, whom Trump pardoned for his crimes in 2017. In 2011 Trump met with Steve Bannon over a possible 2011 run for the presidency (1). Soon after, Trump and Arapio heavily pushed the Obama birther conspiracy (2)(3) and Trump would later even emulate Arpaio’s “concentration camps” (4)(5). At the time Arpaio worked closely with Steven Seagal, even raiding a home with a military tank in September, 2011(6). Steven Seagal shared a business partner with Paul Manafort, Julius Nasso, who was connected to the Gambino crime family and worked with Manafort selling Russian nuclear tech in the US (7). in 2016, Vladimir Putin would personally reward Seagal with Russian citizenship (8). On March 19 2013, Rohrabacher met with Paul Manafort, Vin Weber, and Rick Gates while Manafort was working as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine and their pro-Russian Party of Regions (9), a meeting central to Gates guilty plea in the Mueller investigation (10). Two months later Dana Rohrabcher met with the Russian FSB and the head of the FSB, Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin, arranged and attended by none other than Steven Seagal (11) (12). The man who introduced Steven Seagal to Vladimir Putin, Bob Van Ronkel, happened to attend Donald Trump's Miss Universe 2013 contest in Moscow (13).
Palantir At the same time, Peter Thiel’s Palantir hired Patton-Boggs from 2010-2014. Peter Thiel is a terrible person. Peter Thiel wrote a book about how politically-correct “multiculturalism” has had a debilitating impact on higher education (1), wrote that woman’s sufferage was bad for democracy (2), ran an unethical human herpes experiment offshore (3), and vouched for monopolies (4). Peter Thiel is the embodiment of the alt-right. In 2016 he gave a speech at Donald Trump’s inauguration (5), donated $1.25 million in support of Trump’s cause to various SuperPACs (5), and joined Trump’s transition team (6). One SuperPAC Peter Thiel donated to, along with Erik Prince, was the Mercer-back Make America #1 that funded scandal-plagued and now defunct Cambridge Analytica (7). Peter Thiel showed reporter Maureen Dowd a photo of Thiel, Erik Prince, and Donald Trump together at the "Heroes and Villains" party held in Dec 2016 (14). The same year Palantir hired Patton-Boggs, the president of the Russian federation and former head of Gazprom, Dmitry Medvedev, visited Silicone Valley along with a cadre of figures central to Trump-Russia including: Yuri Milner of DST (8); Russian "top spy" Sergey Kislyak (9); and Victor Vekselberg of Skolkovo, who is under investigation by Mueller (10). While there, they recruited Google’s Eric Schmidt to join the board of Vekselberg’s Skolkovo (11). According to US intelligence, Skolkovo was likely a Russian spy facility. Schmidt’s daughter, Sophia, later interned at Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL, and recommended CA work with Palantir (12); and Vekselberg later held a mysterious meeting with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower (13).
Erick Prince’s link to Peter Thiel and Dana Rohrabacher: Paul Behrends While Peter Thiel was on Trump’s transition team, he held a four hour phone call with Stephen Bannon and Dana Rohrabacher (1). Since then, Rohrabacher’s right hand man, Paul Behrends, has become one of Thiel’s greatest confidants (2) and even arranged a meeting between Thiel and Pro-Putin Hungarian Prime Minster’s senior visor, Jeno Megyesy (5). Paul Behrends was the one that arranged Rohrabacher’s many visits into Russia and even joined in, including a meeting with Russian agent Veselnitskaya in April 2016 (3), two months before the infamous Trump Tower meeting. Paul Behrends is also close with Erik Prince and arranged for Prince to intern with freshman rep Dana Rohrabacher back in 1990 when Prince was still a college student (4). In 1998, when Erik Prince opened up Blackwater, Behrends became a partner at the now infamous Alexander Strategy Group and lobbied extensively for Blackwater (5). ASG then arranged for Dana Rohrabacher’s visit to Prince’s Blackwater compound (6).
Facebook Facebook hired Patton-Boggs from 2012-2015. In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg visited Vekselberg and Medvedev in Moscow (1). While there, Zuckerberg had an interesting conversation with Medvedev:
Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Medvedev talked about Facebook’s role in politics, though only jokingly in reference to its importance in the American presidential campaign, according to Mr. Medvedev’s press office. (2)
Erik Prince's link to Cambridge Analytica: Vincent Tchenguiz, Black Cube, Ko Chun Shun, Palantir, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and Michael Flynn In 2013 Facebook and Palantir joined forces at Cambridge Analytica following Eric Schmidt's daughter's suggestion (1). At the suggestion of a Palantir employee, Alfredas Chmieliauskas, suspected Russian spies Aleksander Kogan and Joseph Chancellor hacked Facebook and sold the data to CA (2) with Steve Bannon’s approval (3). Palantir employees later worked on that data (4). All the while, Facebook and Google hand embeds in Cambridge Analytica’s operation (5). Prior to the formation of Cambridge Analytica, CA’s parent company, SCL, was owned by billionaire Robert Mercer (6) and Vincent Tchenguiz (7). After Tchenguiz divested from SCL, his employee, Julian Wheatland, stayed on the board (8). Israel's Dorian Barak introduced Prince to Tchenguiz with the hope of forming a joint venture together (9). Tchenguiz contracted with Black Cube after SFO raided Tchenguiz's Kaupthing for its links to Alfa-Bank and possible fraud (10)(11).
The Trump campaign has hired Ted Cruz’s former data-analysis firm, Cambridge Analytica—and in doing so, it has connected itself with a British property tycoon, Vincent Tchenguiz, and through him with the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a business associate of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who resigned last week. (12)
Once CA collected Facebook's hacked data, they needed to spread to find a way to use it. Erik Prince then arranged a meeting on August 3, 2016, between Donald Trump Jr., George Nader, and Black Cube agent Joel Zamel (13), an Israeli that specialized in social media manipulation. Zamel had already drawn up a multi-million dollar social media campaign to elect Trump (14). However, when the CA scandal broke, CA shut down, but soon after a new analytics company formed, Emerdata, with many of the same board members as the defunct CA, but with a new name to the list- Erik Prince’s business associate Johnson Ko Chun Shun (15). Squire Patton-Boggs, representing CA, threatened to sue the Guardian over articles on Facebook’s data breach (16).
Reflex Responses and Spectrum Health More directly, in 2011, Erik Prince’s own R2 hired Patton Boggs and from 2011-2012 Dick DeVos’s Spectrum Health hired Patton-Boggs as well. In still one of the biggest mysterious of the Trump-Russia saga, during the 2016 campaign Spectrum Health’s servers pinged servers at Trump Org and that of Russian bank Alfabank, a phenomenon currently under investigation by Mueller (1).
Exxon-Mobil Exxon-Mobil hired Patton Boggs from 2012-2014. Within that timeframe, Exxon-Mobil’s Rex Tillerson penned a deal with Rosneft’s Igor Sechin that earned him the Russian Order of Friendship directly from Vladimir Putin (1). That deal also broke US sanctions law and Exxon-Mobil was fined $2 million (2). Rex Tillerson would become Trump’s Secretary of State after Russia rejected Mitt Romney as a choice (3).
Erickson worked his GOP connections to try to influence Trump’s transition team and the new administration’s staffing. Butina and Torshin discussed who might be appointed secretary of state, with Butina asking how “our people” felt about one name, per the affidavit. (4)
Apollo Global Management From 2013-2015 Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management hired Patton Boggs. Erik Prince’s associate Buzzy Krongrad joined the AGM’s board in 2011 (1). That same year Alexander Torshin’s sanctioned Sberbank formed the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF, and AGM’s head, Leon Black, joined the RDIF board (2). (Russian spy Maria Butina later reported to Torshin on her infiltration of the NRA (3)). In January 2013, Peter Thiel’s associate, Max Levchin, met up with Sberbank’s Herman Greff in Davos during Victor Pinchuk’s Ukrainian Lunch (4). Then in February, Donald Trump’s close associate, Rudy Giuliani, happened to bump into Emin Agalarov (5). Emin hung out with Trump himself in Vegas four months later during the Miss USA pageant, where Trump announced that Miss Universe 2013 would be held in Moscow (6). While in Moscow Herman Greff signed a contract with Donald Trump to finance a Trump Tower Moscow (7). In 2013 Michael Flynn visited the GRU (8) and in January 2014, three months after Trump signed the contract with Greff, a former Sberbank employee and Cambridge University student, Svetlana Lokhova, met Flynn at a conference known for being a Russian spy’s nest (9). At some point Michael Flynn would become an advisor to Cambridge Analytica (10), founded by Steve Bannon at that very same Cambridge University (11). In December 2016 "Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified" (20). In January 2017 Prince Zayed and George Nader introduced Erik Prince to the head of the RDIF, Kirill Dmitriev. (Nader is currently cooperating with the Mueller investigation into that meeting) (12). Patton-Boggs has worked closely with Prince Zayed’s father, Sultan Al Nahyan, for over 20 years (19). Leon Black is good friends with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (13) and, in 2016, AGM loaned Jared Kushner’s company $180 million, which is currently under investigation (14). That same year, while Krongard was still on the board for AGM, AGM bought Prince’s Blackwater through Constellis (15)(16). Then in 2017 Tiger Fund invested into AGM (17) while Erik Prince lobbied Donald Trump to provide the CIA with a private network of intelligence contractors (18).
Erik Prince's other exploits: Mike Pence, True Pundit, and Christophe Charlier Along the way, Erik Prince played other roles in the Trump campaign. For example Erik Prince and Rudy Guiliani worked together to intimidate James Comey into reopening the FBI case against Clinton (1). He was also integral in getting Mike Pence selected as Donald Trump's VP. When Prince returned to America after Blackwater gunned down 17 civilians in the Nisour Square Massacre, Pence greeted him with a party. Prince became a top donator to Pence (2). When Paul Manafort pushed for Trump to choose Pence as VP, Manafort's long-time business associates, Rick Gates and Tom Barrack, were working with Erik Prince-agent Michael Flynn on a plan to build nuclear plants across the US (3). In 2011 Prince had signed a contract with UAE to supply security to a string of nuclear power plants across the Middle East, none of which had been built yet (4). Prince also had a number of email exchanges with Russian banker and Rusal board member, Christophe Charlier. Charlier's chaired at the Russian bank, Renaissance Capital, linked the to the KGB and FSB. His boss owned part of Oleg Deripaska's Rusal and later Charlier became a board member to Rusal himself. Charlier had introduced Prince to a member of Glencore that was involved in the purchase of Rosneft shares described in the Steel dossier as a way of paying Trump and his associates for their work (5). In another avenue, Joseph Schmitz of Trump's National Security Council during the campaign also happened to be the ex-board member of Erik Prince's Blackwater holding company.
Donald Trump’s run (and subsequent win) for the Presidency of the United States of America has been the most controversial and shocking campaign in this country’s history. Among the seemingly nonstop tidal wave of scandal and news coming from this administration, a relatively calm revelation was reported on February 12th, 2017. Aras Agalarov announced that the Trump Tower Moscow project was dead. In this article, Russian media confirmed that the project had begun in 2013. This means that the project was under active development for the two years encompassing Trump’s campaign for the presidency. For these two years, Trump was making real estate deals with Aras Agalarov, a man who the UK media calls a “Kremlin Insider” and “Putin’s main property developer.” Agalarov has even admitted that he takes “orders” from Putin, completing big development projects on demand. Essentially, this is Putin’s right hand man when it comes to carrying out development projects. Also for these two years, and by Trump’s own public admission, as late as Election day itself, he did not believe he was going to win the presidency. Trump believed that after the election was over, he would be able to return to life as a private citizen and jump right back into all of his real estate projects. This is not as trivial a detail as it may seem, because this means all of Trump’s pro-Russia foreign policy was made with the thinking that he was making a pitch for Trump Tower Moscow. The widely contested Steele Dossier details Russian efforts to entice Trump towards pro-Russia policies using promises of future major Russian development deals. One can assume those pushing these “Russian efforts” is Aras Agalarov, because among the deals noted by the Dossier is the 2018 World Cup real estate project, which Agalarov was in charge of. This Dossier (which not only is becoming increasingly verified, but also forms the basis of the FBI’s Russia probe) alleges that Putin was using Agalarov to influence Trump. Trump met Agalarov back in June 2013, which was around the same time The New York Post announced Trump was exploring a presidential run. Also in 2013, Trump was trying to decide where to hold the Miss Universe pageant. If Trump is to be believed, countries around the world were begging for the opportunity to hold the pageant, yet within one week of Trump meeting Agalarov, the honor was bestowed upon Russia. From the moment they met, Trump and Agalarov became very close, so much so that a western diplomat in Moscow has said “If there are skeletons in Trump’s dealings with Russia, Aras knows where they are.” he also added, “And if Aras knows Donald Trump’s skeletons, you wouldn't bet on Vladimir Putin not also knowing.” Due to RT’s (Russia’s Kremlin run media outlet) announcement of Trump Tower Moscow on November 9th (the day of the pageant), it is safe to assume that the project was born sometime between June 2013 and the 2013 pageant. So not only was Trump pushing a development project with a known Kremlin agent while he was campaigning, he was also negotiating with a known Kremlin agent way back when he was just exploring a presidential run. Trump’s development of a Russian policy, which was done with an eye toward business gains, began in the Spring of 2013. So how did Agalarov first sidle up to Trump? It involves his son, a pop musician, Emin Agalarov. Emin was married to the daughter of Azerbaijan’s President. Trump had in 2012, signed a big deal in Azerbaijan. Trump Tower Baku was a deal that involved some of the most corrupt businessmen in Azerbaijan, so much so that several Senators asked Congress to investigate the project. So meeting Aras and Emin in 2013 gave Trump an avenue to advance on two big deals: Towers in Moscow and Baku. This further explains why it took Trump less than one week after meeting Aras to give the pageant to Russia. Trump quickly invited Putin, which turned this whole event into a well prepared Trump-Kremlin summit. And well prepared Trump was, as he brought along Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, two New York based Russian developers who he had previously worked with for Trump Soho. Sapir and Rosen would later say, “Russians from the oil and gas businesses had long been asking to be partners [in Trump Tower Moscow].” This means that well before November 2013, Trump’s Russian business partners told him Russians in the oil and gas industries wanted to give him money. Even though Trump has been suspiciously silent about who he met at the Moscow pageant, Trump did say that “Almost all of Russia’s oligarchs were there.” Also note that the Dossier alleges that Trump’s Russia policy is based on Russians in oil and gas wanting to give him money. But even though “all of Russia's oligarchs” were in attendance, there was one notable name that didn't show up. Vladimir Putin. Don Jr. and Michael Cohen have publicly acknowledged that nothing gets built in Moscow without Putin’s approval, and that the things that were holding up Trump Tower Moscow were permits. This however does not mean that Putin has to be the one giving the go ahead. Putin has a guy to get that job done, and his name is Vladimir Kozhin. Putin, along with everyone else knew at this time that Trump was exploring a political run. This means that even though Putin’s public and friendly attendance would lock in Trump's business, it could also potentially damage Trump as a political asset. So who was sent instead bearing Putin’s apologies? Vladimir Kozhin. Media reports confirm that Trump had business meetings throughout his Russian trip in 2013, and now we know some of the people he was meeting with. Trump had Putin’s property chief, Putin's real estate developer, and his Russian developer friends who publicly claimed to have Russian oil and gas investors, all eating at the same table. Essentially, he had the developer, the permits and the money all in one place, thus marking the birth of Trump Tower Moscow on November 9th, 2013. After decades of unsuccessful business ventures in Moscow, Trump had secured a Putin approved deal to build a tower right in its heart. This was a night for celebration. After the pageant, there was a “vodka infused afterparty” at a “glitzy Moscow nightclub”. Trump had even more of a reason to celebrate because at Nobu Moscow, he met with a few more Russian CEO’s and oligarchs including the head of state-owned Sberbank, and it paid off. How do we know it paid off? Because on November 19th, Sberbak announced a 2.4 billion dollar investment in the Trump-Aras deal. Coincidentally (honestly at this point, not so much so) Bloomberg says the Sberbank CEO Trump dined with is a “longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin.” Trump never got the face to face he wanted with Putin, but Putin certainly gave Trump maybe the most lucrative business weekend of Trump's life. Even though at this point in time the Trump Tower Moscow deal is dead (and only killed at a time when the Trump-Russia scandal got so big that Putin was forced to server public ties with Trump), it is very important to understand that all of Trump’s Russia policies were developed while the deal was live. In the meantime, Trump’s one-time personal lawyer is trying to muddy the waters. Cohen is now pretending that the Trump-Putin accord on Trump Tower Moscow never happened. Cohen says that Trump pal Felix Sater initiated a Trump Tower Moscow deal in late 2015 by saying he’d find an (unnamed) Russia developer. In fact, there is no evidence that, in late 2015, the 2013 Trump-Putin deal wasn't just on hold-with Putin withholding permits as leverage. This is why, in emails to Cohen, Sater promises to get Putin on board. What was needed was for the deal to be REstarted, not started. Sater underscores that Putin’s re-initiated support for Trump Tower Moscow (via permits) depends on Trump becoming president. This is what Sater meant in writing to Cohen “Our boy Trump can become President of the United States of America, and we can engineer it.” As long as Trump wins the presidency and implements favorable Russia policy, he will get to enjoy the deal he was originally promised in 2013. Cohen's role in Sater’s tit for tat, Russia policy for Trump Tower Moscow, was much more substantial than simply receiving emails from Sater. The Dossier claims that Cohen worked with another man, Dmitri Peskov. The Dossier states that Cohen and Peskov were the two point men on the Trump-Putin accord. Peskov was also the one man you needed to go through in 2015 if you wanted permits to build in Moscow. Was Cohen writing Peskov in January 2016 about Trump Tower Moscow permits? Yes, because Putin had reneged on the 2013 deal. Remember Trump and his assumption that he would not win the presidency? This becomes very important now because the Trump team hedged their bets and began seeking a Trump Tower Moscow deal without the presidency. Peskov may well have not responded to further Cohen inquiries for the fact that Trump had nothing to offer Putin. What was called for, in January 2016, was Trump making clear to Putin that he intended to run a winning campaign that was Russia-friendly. This is why within 60 days of Peskov blowing off Cohen, Carter Page was hired, as was George Papadopoulos along with Paul Manafort and Richard Burt. All of these hires were inexplicable from the standpoint of credentials or conflicts of interest. These hires did however, assure Putin that Trump would EARN a Trump Tower Moscow via his policy. Greasy Page Among these hires, Carter Page stands alone as the most shocking and logic defying. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump assured American voters that he would only surround himself with the very best advisors. Of particular interest to voters and the media, was who would advise Trump on foreign policy, as this was a known weak spot for the candidate. On March 21st, 2016, the Washington Post asked Trump for the names of his foreign policy team. Trump gave five names, one of them being Carter Page. Page was at the time, representing himself as an energy investor, advisor and expert, with a particular focus on transaction in Russia. The problem was that Page was a relatively unknown player to many. In fact, the most notable biographical fact about Page was that in 2013 the FBI had investigated him for passing intel to a Russian spy. The FBI also had intercepts that as of 2013, the Russians were seriously considering using Page as a spy for the Kremlin. Thereafter, Page became an investor in and and advisor for Russian energy giant Gazprom, this seemingly being his credential for being on Trump’s team. Another odd fact about Page was that his office was in the building next to Trump Tower, a building that had a private passage into Tump tower. For a long time, Page was secretive about who possibly could have known him well enough to think him appropriate for an advisor to a presidential campaign. It was later revealed that it was Sam Clovis who recruited Page, a man who he himself had secured a position he had no business being in. Clovis’ (a non-scientist) nomination to head science at the USDA came just three weeks before a big Russia related story involving Clovis would drop in the New York Post. Specifically, the post reported that Clovis was one of a small cadre of Trump campaign officials involved in discussing a Trump-Putin meeting. The Washington Post story established a second major point of intersection between Sam Clovis and Carter Page. Page’s peer on Trump’s Foreign Policy team, George Papadopoulos (who is as unqualified as Page) began sending emails in March about a Putin meet. Papadopoulos had connections in “Russian leadership” and wanted to discuss with top Trump brass a Trump-Putin meeting in Moscow. Clovis’ first response was that the campaign should discuss the possibility with its friends and associates connected to NATO countries. By May, Clovis’ position had changed. Now, he said no advice needed to be sought, but the campaign had to be careful of “legal issues”. Clovis focused on one issue in particular; how to get a private citizen to Moscow to speak with Kremlin agents without violating the law. The most obvious answer was to send a private citizen to Moscow on “other business” and then keep the Kremlin meet up secret. Corey Lewandowski was another top Trump official on this email chain about how to legally set up a Trump camp-Kremlin meeting in Moscow. A few weeks after Lewandowski and Clovis saw Papadopoulos’ proposal, Lewandowski cleared Page for a Moscow Trip. Page was cleared by Lewandowski to travel to Moscow as a private citizen to give a speech on foreign policy to journalist and students. In his July Moscow speech, Page savaged the United States and praised Russia in terms that were deeply alarming. So alarming, that the FBI opened an investigation into him and successfully secured a FISA warrant to monitor him. This all happened while Page was a top Trump aide traveling on a campaign sanctioned, post Papadopoulos email trip. According to the dossier, Page did secretly meet with Kremlin agents as the Kremlin had requested. The dossier goes further to say that Page met with Igor Sechin, CEO of Russia's oil giant, Rosneft. Not only does the dossier make these claims, but the FBI thinks this is the case as well. The FBI is so convinced that Page met Sechin that in March, they interviewed him for more hours than any other Trump-Russia witness. According to the dossier, Sechin offered Trump (via Page) a .5% brokerage of a 19% Rosneft stake sale. This claim was confirmed on December 7th, as Rosneft sold a 19.5% stake to unknown entities. Shockingly, the day after the Rosneft sale, Page traveled to Moscow and by his own admission, met with Rosneft’s brass. Keep in mind that this sale was the largest oil sale in Russian history and that Page was allegedly not part of the Trump campaign at the time it closed. So why did Rosneft want/need to meet with Page on December 8th? And why was Page as he seems to admit, discussing sanctions with them? Remember that the dossier claims that Sechin offered Trump a brokerage fee of the Rosneft sale in exchange for “a change in U.S. sanctions policy” This part of the deal was assured in Trump’s first major foreign policy speech on April 27th of 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel. Raid of the Mayflower The speech, which was arranged by Jared Kushner in mid-March was to be hosted by the Center for the National Interest, a conservative think tank. The Center is widely known to have “ties to the Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin” per Politico. The speech was slated to be at the National Press Club, an august venue with a long history of staging secure events with large crowds. Less than 24 hours before the speech, it was cancelled. The Trump campaign declared the venue was too small and unsafe. So Manafort moved the event to the Mayflower Hotel; a smaller, less secure site. The decision confirmed the campaign’s excuses were lies. The two things the Mayflower had that the NPC didn't were 581 private rooms for private meetings, and restricted VIP only areas. The latter was important because Manafort wanted Trump to hold an intimate, 24 person cocktail hour in the Mayflower’s VIP Senate Room. Among the 24 at the event, was Trump, CNI event coordinator Heilbrunn, Jeff Sessions, Kushner, Lewandowski, Manafort, Bud McFarlane and four ambassadors. The four ambassadors were the only four ambassadors in the world (out of 195 total) that the Putin-linked CNI invited to the event. The biggest oil deal in Russia’s history, involved the coordination of entities from three countries, Russia, Italy, and Singapore. What countries did the ambassadors at the Mayflower come from? Russia, Italy, Singapore, and the Philippines, which is often cited as a Rosneft expansion target. Trump warmly, and privately chatted with the 3 Rosneft deal nations at a cocktail hour right before his first big foreign policy event. In his speech, Trump called for a Russian detente. Richard Burt, who is a Russia pipeline advocate, and also a CNI and Russian Alfa Bank advisor, crafted the speech. This event was the only Kislyak meeting Sessions never disclosed to Congress, even after accusations of perjury. But per the organizer of the event, Heilbrunn claims this meeting definitely occurred. The VIP event wasn't just a receiving line as Trump claimed. It was a a full event. Sessions would go on to feel the need to hide his contact with Kislyak at the Mayflower, even after accusations of perjury. The White House claims it has no recollection of any of the VIPs in attendance, even though this was Trump’s biggest ever foreign policy event. Kislyak went on to fail to disclose his meeting with Trump at the Mayflower, citing only a meeting at the RNC. We now have an event that our Attorney General, the White House, and a Russian ambassadospy recruiter has lied about. The Rosneft players were present, as was Trump’s recent suspicious Russian linked hires, along with Kremlin agents. This was not an event that could have been easily forgotten, yet the most common line we hear when this event is inquired into is “I don't recall.” Remember that even after Page was separated from the Trump Campaign, he literally had backdoor access to Trump Tower via his office. Trump always stays in contact with his former advisors, and that he spent December sneaking people into Trump Tower. On the day the Rosneft sale closed, Kushner and Flynn snuck Russian ambassadospy Kislyak into Trump Tower for a secret Meeting. Also present was Bud McFarlane (a VIP at the Mayflower Speech). It was at that speech that Trump laid out his pro-Russia foreign policy, including a promise to cut Russia “a very good deal” on sanctions. So did Page go next door to Trump Tower on December 7th, then travel to Moscow to see Rosnfet on December 8th? We know on December 7th, team Trump was at Trump Tower secretly (Kushner and Flynn snuck Kislyak in) talking oil. We know Page was in Moscow the next day talking to Rosneft brass. We know Page has lied in the past about meetings with Russians, and has been suspected of espionage by the FBI and was interrogated by the FBI more that any other Trump-Russia witness, and as we have seen, Page’s key credentials for being a Trump aide were willingness to meet with shady Russians and ties to Russian energy. It would also appear, if his public comments are to be believed, that he has a more fanatical devotion to Russia than to the United States. With all of this knowledge, you quickly see that the Steeler dossier is all about Agalarov, real estate deals, and Trump Tower Moscow. Go back to Don Jr’s June 9th meeting and you’ll see that its all about Agalarov, real estate deals, and Trump Tower Moscow. Who directed the June 9th meeting be set up? Agalarov, on Putin’s orders. Who was there? Trump’s then point man on Russia deals, Don Jr. Who was the guy arranging the meeting? Emin’s manager, who partied with Trump and Aras in Moscow in 2013. Kushner was there because he was working on a new Trump-Putin backchannel after the Cohen-Peskov failure. Manafort was Putin’s assurance Trump would stay on track; he set up the Mayflower event with Jared so that Trump and Sessions could meet with Sergei Kislyak. The Mayflower event that Manafort, Jared, and Richard Burt had set up 60 days earlier was were Trump promised Putin (via Kislyak) a “good deal” on sanctions. And Aras’ continued involvement in Trump's life, assured Trump that Trump Tower Moscow wasn't dead. The message is simple: the November 2013 accord Trump reached with Putin's agents, reaffirmed at the Mayflower in 2016, is still in place. Putin gets the unilateral lifting of sanctions along with a friendly voice in Washington, and Trump gets Russian enrichments while in office by way of the December 2016 Rosneft oil deal, and eventually Trump Tower Moscow. What is now perfectly clear is that the Trump-Russia scandal began in earnest the moment Trump gave Russia the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. ThiswholetimelineofeventshasbeenchronicledbySethAbramsononhispersonaltwitteraccount(@SethAbramson).Ihavejusttakenhistweetsfromthreeseparatethreads,andcompiledthemintoalongformarticlesothatitcanbeeasilyread.Becausethesethreadsdetaildifferenttimeperiods,Ihavemovedsomeitemsaroundsothatthispostcanbereadinamorechronologicalway.IhavetriedtonotalterMr.Abramson'swordstoomuch,butIhavere-writtenafewpartstomakeitfitmorecoherentlyinthisform.Pleasegovisithistwitteraccount,itisFULLofamazingindepthanalysisofourpoliticalclimate.Youcanfindallofhissourcingforthispostinthesethreads:https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/845089192438829056https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/903249294299471872andhttps://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/903693399114612736
Miss Philippines Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach reacts as she is called back to the stage to be crowned Miss Universe during the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant in Las Vegas, Nevada December 20, 2015. The 2019 Miss Universe pageant had a total of 90 participants! Being a successful Miss Universe bettor is all about finding value in the Miss Universe odds. The Pageant Is Subjective. As mentioned, there isn’t a whole lot of strategy involved with betting on the Miss Universe pageant. The Super Bowl of pageantry, Miss Universe 2015, will air Sunday night at 7 p.m. Eastern on Fox live from Las Vegas, and in the spirit of Sin City, bets are being made on who will be crowned victorious.While 80 contestants have a chance at snagging the crown, the odds are better for some of the beauties. Betting site Odds Shark compiled a list of odds of who will win the 64th Miss Universe ... The Super Bowl of pageantry, Miss Universe 2015, will air Sunday night at 7 p.m. Eastern on Fox live from Las Vegas, and in the spirit of Sin City, bets are being made on who will be crowned ... The Super Bowl of pageantry, Miss Universe 2015, will air Sunday night at 7 p.m. Eastern on Fox live from Las Vegas, and in the spirit of Sin City, bets are being made on who will be crowned ...
Miss Universe 2015 Official Score Results from Judges ...
Betting on the Miss Universe pageant is very similar to betting on, for example, a golf tournament. You will have a list of competitors and their odds will range from the best (or the favorite) to ... My perspective (angle) on the crowning moment of Miss Universe 2015. I was personally rooting for Miss Philippines this year as she had a flawless competitio... http://www.missuniverse.com The 80 contestants will compete in swimsuit and evening gown during the live stream. This competition along with an interview por... In this video, we discuss the big mistake that occurred during the Miss Universe 2015 pageant. In the final round, host Steve Harvey read the card wrong, and... Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
