Thursday, January 12, 2017

9/11 it says, and granite pillars do not lie???

From the Independent:


Moving on, Buzzfeed published a document batch; so has anyone correlated the numbering to see gaps, if any, in the 35 pages buzzfed?

Also, who did the yellow highlighting; why are the pages askew as if copies of copies were held by BF; what about different type fonts; what about the scant redactions; what about post-election items in the BF set; and who did the lower right handwritten page numbering? Add to this stories of the document having circulated DC for some time without anyone before Buzzfeed publishing, and does that reach back to Michael Hastings' curious demise? (If months of circulation were to be true, how do you fit in the later dates put onto some of the items?)

That Buzzfeed sequence is full, 1-35 - handwritten numbering, but somebody shuffled the deck and possibly withdrew some items. Yes/no? As to the bed-wetting part of the story, hotel records would indicate moving in a new mattress and sheets, Trump not expected to have been sleeping overnight otherwise, on a wet bed. So, truth or fiction? It sure looks like a stack of BS from BF's willingness to publish; and try this hummer - who, which Republican candidate, was allegedly using the firm to do anti-Trump work before things segued, allegedly, to pro-Trump anti-Clinton Russian effort, all the while this British firm not working for nothing so who paid what when? So many loose ends it really seems to be something cooked after compromised email was discovered, by which cooks, for what reason?

There are more questions than answers; just don't say the entire thing was cooked up in some pizza parlor. Mixing fake news stories would be bad form.

UPDATE: Do you suppose somebody put together a similar "kompromat" package on Paul Ryan and/or Mike Pence? That would be of interest because each of them seems in his own way to be more a danger than Trump. One on Paul Ryan would be a godsend. Beyond whether he has been faking his marathon time, and such light weight stuff?

FURTHER: Read the Buzzfeed pdf item. One thing stood out. The assertion that Russia opposes TPP and TIPT (whatever abbreviation is in use for the US-Euro bonanza being proposed for the benefit of international, transnational corporations). That part of the Buzzfeed papers looks ginned up to boost both of those labor-unfriendly trade things cut/pasted behind closed doors by plutocrats/oligarchs/corporatists, or use other names. It makes the "dossier" look like a package of junk with the one passing comment there to justify passing stuff "The Russians don't like." A Buzzfeed item page link would be given, but the entire thing is a pdf made up of image pages; where the convenience of word-searching fails. Big surprise. It's in there someplace. Trust me. But verify.

Later Added Note: This link, has both the pdf and a *.txt version - i.e., word search is possible and the operative text is:

- However, equally important is Kremlin objective to shift policy consensus favourably [British spelling] to Russia in US whoever wins. Both presidential candidates' opposition to TPP and TTIP viewed as a result in this respect

FURTHER: An AP feed carried by Strib:

The purported Russian efforts were described in a newly released and uncorroborated dossier produced in August. But they had circulated more widely in Washington in October — following early reports and opaque warnings from elected officials that something was afoot involving the Kremlin and Trump.

In October, Mother Jones magazine described how a former Western spy — assigned to look into Trump's Russian ties for a private American firm — had presented his findings to the FBI in August. Those findings, the magazine said, were produced for political opposition research and said that Russian intelligence had compromised Trump during his visits to Moscow — information that, if true, could be used to blackmail him or undermine his presidency.

Here is a screen capture of the final page Buzzfeed posted:


Aside from that item the latest date found on a quick scan within the Buzzfeed pdf doc drop was Oct. 18, Oct. 19. There is a gap. What's up?

The latest item from Buzzfeed is "COMPANY INTELLIGENCE REPORT 2916/130.

35 Buzzfeed online pages to cover 130 reports seems a puzzle. What's being held back, presumably from Buzzfeed as well as others?

This suggests unintelligent intelligence, or somebody's holding back a smoking gun or two, or what?

Again, what's happening? Who is playing what games with Trump and with the public, and WHY? Ask Clapper? Recall he's the one that testified that NSA was not spying on US citizens; and Snowden said that such testimony is what triggered and pinned his bullshit meter, to where he blew the whistle. That's something of a credibility gap.

FURTHER: Michael Hastings' death was June, 2013. After looking it up, one has to say, unrelated. It seems like only yesterday, but years ago. The mystery still lingers. This link, search the item for "2013," Podesta emailing about Clinton Goldman Sachs speeches, 2013; with no month mentioned. What else was going on, summer of 2013? This link? And this?

Whatever, Hastings seems to have little overlap with Putin-Trump; bottom line? Much sizzle, where's the steak?

FURTHER: Well, 2013 was an eventful year. And overlap is conjectural in any event. Coincidence and causality differ.

That said:

Trump was testing the waters, for 2012, with a Michael D. Cohen reportedly point man, in Iowa, etc., and note the "Tom Hagan" reference in this April 2011 ABC News "pit bull" featuring item. Background? The same Michael Cohen showing up in the Buzzfeed web posting? With plausible deniability.

And remember, at the time of his strange automobile death, Hastings was writing for Buzzfeed; coincidence or not.

Now, 2013, months after Hastings departure from the living on June 18, RT reported; "US 'Miss Universe' billionaire plans Russian Trump Tower - Published time: 9 Nov, 2013 16:36."

Around the time of Hastings' death, Syria was big news on RT; e.g., per here, here, here and here.

Hacking was RT news in March, 2013. Archived June 17, 2013, RT news bites lead item, "Majority of Americans opposed to arming Syrian rebels."

Back to Oct. 31, 2016, what should we make of this NYT item, in light of Buzzfeed's publishing of the tepid proof-challenged "dossier?" The veiled allusions seem more ominous than the Buzzfeed data drop itself. Go figure.

It is all a mystery. Wrapped in an enigma. But such rhetoric is not new. Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in Missouri had it all. And, folks, that was before the World Wide Web existed to be hacked; and it was only focused on Russia, not US presidential elections. The old days.

Part of the Buzzfeed focus was the allegation Putin cared greatly about Russian emigres and that Trump assisted info gathering re same. It is in the Buzzfeed 35 pages, again, not subject to word search. So check it out.

Later Added Note: This link, do a plaintext search, emigres not being the keyword, but: oligarchs

Oct. 2013, RT, field of dreams no less. That item's image does suggest real estate opportunity in Moscow that we normally don't see, with the Kremlin and the church usually pictured, as quaint. And check the sidebar, that item, and here. Emigre/oligarch stuff? This, also 2013 news. Litvinenko had his fifteen minutes of fame. Enigmatic fame.

Panama papers putin, as a websearch?

Another emigre, as coincidence again? Initially thought a heart attach, which was the Andrew Breitbart autopsy synopsis. That NYT item:

In July, a long-running inquiry offered a searing indictment of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This week, a parliamentary panel castigated former Prime Minister David Cameron for his intervention in Libya alongside France in 2011. In the current negotiations over Syria, the name of Britain’s new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has barely been mentioned.

Mr. Perepilichnyy, 44, died in 2012, three years after he fled Russia, while jogging near his luxurious home on a private estate southwest of London. The death was initially attributed to a heart attack, but traces of gelsemium, a rare toxin used as a poison and derived from a plant grown in the Himalayas, were later found in his stomach.

At the time of his death, he was associated with investigations into a $230 million tax fraud in Russia against an American financier, William F. Browder, a high-profile critic of Mr. Putin.

Mr. Perepilichnyy, who had cooperated with the Swiss authorities and Mr. Browder’s investment company, which were both investigating the fraud, was one of five people linked to the case who have died mysteriously.

Perhaps the most prominent was Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor working for Mr. Browder, who was arrested and died in prison in 2009 after the Russian authorities denied him medical care.

In the United States, Mr. Browder lobbied for legislation known as the Magnitsky Act that provided for sanctions against Russians accused of wrongdoing at home.

The tone among Britain’s post-referendum leaders, by contrast, seems to suggest they are shying from further confrontation with Moscow.

In a newspaper column before he took office, Mr. Johnson — then mayor of London — called Mr. Putin “a ruthless and manipulative tyrant.”

As foreign minister, his office used the tested clichés of diplomacy to say that despite “some significant differences with Russia,” the two countries should “continue to build a constructive dialogue.”

[links in original omitted, excerpt from article end]

Browder is mentioned in that item, with a NYT link to this other NYT follow-the-money item, stating in part:

Mr. Browder has hired the law firm of John D. Ashcroft, the former United States attorney general, to represent him in New York in a request for a subpoena for bank wire transfer and other records that Mr. Ashcroft contends will prove Mr. Browder’s allegations.

The filing is a new twist on Mr. Browder’s case, which began almost four years ago. His lawyers say the wire transfers will show a fraud larger than previously disclosed — remarkable even by the standards of Russia.

In its sweep and scale, the case has echoes of the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal in the late 1990s, though this time there are no allegations that American banks other than the subsidiary of a Russian investment company were involved.
Continue reading the main story

Mr. Browder was expelled from Russia in a politically tinged visa refusal in 2005, and relocated his business, Hermitage Capital Management, to London. Later, he said subsidiary companies he had formed in Russia to invest in Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, were used by others to acquire a fraudulent tax refund of $230 million.

Now, the filing by Mr. Ashcroft, whose law firm is based in Kansas City, Mo., suggests that companies other than his own were also used in a similar fraud. The court papers contend that at least another $100 million that foreign investors in Gazprom had paid to Russian authorities in taxes up to 2006 were later stolen in schemes involving fraudulent refunds.

Mr. Ashcroft’s filing says that Hermitage was subjected to “a series of events that might seem unlikely to befall an influential global investment firm.”

“Certain Russian officials and private citizens entered into a conspiracy to reregister to themselves three investment companies owned by the Hermitage Fund,” the filing says, with the goal to “apply for and receive fraudulent tax refunds of over $230 million from the Russian Treasury, and finally, to funnel these proceeds through bank accounts in Russia and the United States.”

The filing outlines a familiar story of brazen corruption in Russia. Even Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, speaks often on the topic. Last Sunday, for instance, Mr. Medvedev told a television interviewer that foreigners perceive corruption in Russia to be “without limits.”

The evidence sought in Mr. Ashcroft’s filing, though, is intended to resolve another dimension to Russian corruption. If the subpoena is granted, the wire transfer evidence would be used, Mr. Ashcroft said, to vindicate Mr. Browder’s lawyers in Russia, who they contend have been unjustly jailed and threatened with fabricated criminal cases.

Mr. Browder is not seeking compensation or financial benefit, because he says his investors lost no money in the scheme.

Mr. Browder has made big gambits before as an activist investor in Russia, and has often sought to attract media attention to his causes. The request for a subpoena, provided to journalists by Mr. Browder’s lawyers, is not required to prove the allegations, but rather to raise the possibility as a basis for the court to subpoena evidence.

Evidence is being sought from Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, but only in their role as processors of overseas wire transfers, as well as from the New York office of the Russian investment company Renaissance.

Browder again, here. People have opinions.

Recent news; Tulsi Gabbard, video here and here (linked from here). NPR, here.

Also recent, here, here and here.

Gabbard and Trump, e.g., WaPo, NBC News, McClatchyDC.

Columbia Journalism Review op-ed, defending Buzzfeed's publishing "the 35 page dossier."

Glenn Greenwald, video, op-ed at Intercept.

Another video. All for now.