US Arrests Russia’s Foremost 2nd Amendment Activist

As I suspected, Trump’s meeting with Putin did indeed turn out to be a damp squib, at least relative to the unrealistic expectations that all sorts of strongly ideological camps had built up around it.

Putin repeated his insistence that Russia did not meddle in the US elections, congratulated Trump on North Korea, acknowledged that the two countries need to be responsible about nuclear weapons, voiced his disagreement with the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, and repeated his customary boilerplate about how the Ukrainians need to stick with the Minsk Agreement. Trump, for his part, said that it was a productive meeting, congratulated Putin on a successful FIFA World Cup and on “bombing the hell out of ISIS”, and promised there would be further meetings.

So, all really banal stuff, really – even if the “Resistance” was in heavier than usual “zrada” mode about its denunciations of Trump as a traitor, as a puppet of Putler, and so forth.

resistance-zrada

However, the American Deep State let its feelings be known with actions, not just words: “Russian National Charged in Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States.”

A criminal complaint was unsealed today in the District of Columbia charging a Russian national with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General.

The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie K. Liu, and Nancy McNamara, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Maria Butina, 29, a Russian citizen residing in Washington D.C., was arrested on July 15, 2018, in Washington, D.C., and made her initial appearance this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was ordered held pending a hearing set for July 18, 2018.

According to the affidavit in support of the complaint, from as early as 2015 and continuing through at least February 2017, Butina worked at the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government who was previously a member of the legislature of the Russian Federation and later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank. This Russian official was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018.

The court filings detail the Russian official’s and Butina’s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation. The filings also describe certain actions taken by Butina to further this effort during multiple visits from Russia and, later, when she entered and resided in the United States on a student visa. The filings allege that she undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law.

In the Drumpf Truther segment of American society, Butina has attained minor notoriety as an agent of Russian influence. These conspiracy theories revolve around the Kremlin’s alleged links to the NRA, which Russiagaters allege is used as a conduit to fund Republican politicians. In some of the wilder fantasies floating around “Resistance” hives such as /r/politics, this is something that could be used to topple Trump, the GOP, and the NRA all in one go, ushering in a golden age of gender neutral bathrooms, abolition of freeze peach, and nuclear-assisted architectural redevelopment in Moscow.

maria-butina-1

Typical Facebook profile shot of Maria Butina.

However, in Russia itself, Maria Butina is known as one of the prime proponents of increased gun rights, and certainly its most telegenic one. 

In 2011, Butina founded The Right to Bear Arms (Pravo na Oruzhie), the premier gun rights organization in Russia.

maria-butina-2

Maria Butina in a May 1, 2013 gun rights march with LDPR banners in the background. Gun rights liberalization is a demand of many Russian nationalist organizations, though it does not enjoy the support of the political elites.

Right to Bear Arms has carried out public protests for gun rights in Russia, conducted  educational seminars, lobbied for a Russian version of the Second Amendment, providing free legal defense for people facing criminal charges for self-defense, and has promoted “castle doctrine” laws to replace the criminal-friendly laws currently in place in Russia, as in most of Europe.

Since these policies are very much in line with what the NRA works to promote in US, there is nothing particularly sinister about Right to Bear Arms having contacts with the American organization; contacts which the American MSM are “discovering” even as I write this. Incidentally, if you happen to be a Blue Checkmark who’s reading this, feel free to also mention that Right to Bear Arms also joined the European gun rights lobbying organization Firearms United in 2014, and cite it as yet more evidence of Putler’s meddling in Western democracies. You’re welcome.

Incidentally, as per a 2012 article by our good friend Julia Ioffe (whose title – “The Rise of Russia’s Gun Nuts” – betrays the unsurprising fact that she doesn’t exactly share her convictions), Maria Butina is a big fan of the United States:

This summer, the group successfully defended a woman named Tatyana Kudryavtseva who fought off a rapist with a knife and accidentally killed him. She faced 15 years in jail for homicide; Right to Bear Arms got her exonerated. “If she had had a gun, it would have been enough just to show the gun, as American statistics show,” says Butina, who is a fan of statistics in general and American statistics in particular. …

Incidentally, the rapist in question was an Uzbek immigrant, a minor detail that Ioffe conveniently leaves out of her hit piece – but which does reflect one major reason why gun rights are popular in Russian nationalist circles.

The world, as Butina sees it, is both inherently savage and inhabited by people who behave rationally at all times— especially criminals. “A person may decide not to commit a crime if he thinks he may be shot or may encounter resistance,” Butina said. As proof, she pointed to America’s permissive attitude toward gun ownership. “If we take the number of homicides per one hundred thousand people in the population, according to our police statistics, it’s thirteen homicides in Russia, and 5.2 in the U.S.”

Of course, homicide rates are lower still in countries with stricter gun laws. But Butina doesn’t flinch when challenged on her statistics; she simply summons more statistics. “People online take facts from my blog, turn them upside and scream, ‘Just look at this! In the States, thirty thousand people die from firearms every year! How awful!’” she scoffed. “But so what? Switzerland has the most suicides using a gun, and yet, Switzerland has the least number of total suicides. Moreover, a gun is the most humane weapon for suicide compared to all the other methods that exist.”

This particular strand of Americanophilia, which is entirely alien to the American Blue Checkmark class, does not necessarily translate into opposition politics – Maria Butina herself votes for Putin and United Russia, and her ideological fellow travelers in Russia tend to be right-wing social conservatives and nationalists, whose relations with Putin are actually rather complex. However, it does represent a distinct aspect of Russian nationalism, many of whose proponents admire certain aspects of American culture, such as its powerful capitalist economy, unapologetic “boot in your ass” patriotism, Constitutional protection of free speech, and its admittedly waning, but nonetheless not yet vanished, frontier spirit of asperity – after all, Russia’s Cossacks were America’s cowboys.

(My regular readers will be aware of such thinking though our translations of Russian nationalist Egor Kholmogorov, and it is even more pronounced amongst younger Russian nationalists, such as the ones in the Sputnik & Pogrom crowd. Incidentally, speaking of Sputnik & Pogrom – a nationalist-learning journal that has been blocked in Russia for criticizing Putin once too many times – Maria Butina even once published an article there, a statistics-heavy demolition of positive myths about Soviet demographics).

That said, Right to Bear Arms has no explicit ideology, and has reached out to all sorts of unlikely constituencies. For instance, in 2014, Butina launched the campaign, “Communists abolished gun rights, and they will also return them! 1918-2014” by posting a petition to that effect on the website of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (the context being that whereas the Russian Empire had liberal gun laws, the Bolsheviks introduced a law demanding the people hand in their rifles, revolvers, and ammunition in 1918, a few months after usurping power).

Even so, there’s no particular evidence that Butina’s support for Putin is reciprocated to any significant extent:

Along the way, she gained a powerful ally in Alexander Torshin, a high-ranking member of United Russia and the first deputy speaker of the Russian senate. Torshin is also a member of the NRA, which he told me he admires because it stands for “stability”—the credo of Putin’s reign.

On July 24, the pair made their case for gun rights before the senate. However, their appearance came only four days after James Holmes mowed down dozens of people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. This fortified the view of many Russian senators, Torshin said, that, if Russians had handguns, they would all shoot each other. “How can you have so little trust for yourself, for your people?” he lamented. …

The major obstacle for Butina and her group is Putin. Never mind that he himself is an avid outdoorsman. Behind closed doors, Putin seems to have put forth the position that his surrogates are vocalizing: It is too soon, and too dangerous. [Russian liberal politician] Gudkov has a different explanation: “He’s afraid of his own people.”

For her part, Butina denies that an armed populace would threaten the Putin regime. “The right to bear arms is given to you by your government and is a nice right to have,” she reasoned, “so taking some kind of anti-government stand … .” She trailed off to indicate that doing so would be the height of rashness. Plus, she pointed out, “pistols are the absolute worst weapon for toppling a government, let me tell you.”

It is a most hilarious irony that Maria Butina’s very last post on her defunct Russophone LiveJournal blog was a complaint that one of her blog posts had gotten blocked by Russian state censorship agency Roskomnadzor for “containing information that is forbidden in the Russian Federation.” In that post, which dates to June 5, 2018, she also announced that she was closing her blog, since she considered further censorship inevitable. This illustrates the banal and depressing reality that I have also commented upon at length: The gray bureaucrats, spies, and policemen who run Russia are decidedly uninterested in neither the First nor the Second Amendment, with “overly enthusiastic” promotion of gun rights, as with nationalism, meant “for export” only.

In the meantime, Butina’s main political sponsor, Russian Senator Alexander Torshin – who shares her pro-gun stances, and similarly had “ties” with the NRA – had left politics to become State Secretary/Vice Deputy of the Central Bank of Russia in 2015. This is only about the 10th highest position within the CBR, and actually represents a resumption of his status when he last worked there in 1995-98. While Torshin brought her on as an assistant there, she formally left that position in May 2017.

This happened in the context of Butina settling into life in the US after 2015, which is when she appears to have begun living there at least semi-permanently. During this period, she got involved in business with US conservative operative Paul Erickson, participated in American civic life (mostly to do with Russian relations, gun rights, and conservative politics – which were, understandably, her main interests), and had recently finished an International Relations degree at the American University in Washington D.C. This might be suspicious if this were not a mirror reflection of her high-achieving life decade in Russia. She had studied Political Science at Altai State University, made considerable money via a chain of furniture stores she had build up and sold, and participated in the youth wing of United Russia and right-wing networking, which is what netted her Alexander Torshin, her main sponsor.

As I finish this article, news of Butina’s arrest is the most upvoted item in /r/politics (the world’s premier forum for Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers), and the second most upvoted item in /r/worldnews (probably the world’s premier Anglophone forum for international affairs discussions). Tomorrow, her name will be plastered across American and European newspapers.

And yet at the end of the day, her “Kremlin Connection” consists of a mid-level Russian conservative politician who happens to have attended a few NRA conventions and hosted a few NRA delegations before Russian-American relations went into the gutter, who then left politics to return to his former life as a central bank official.

Bearing this in mind, here is the Occam’s Razor explanation of Maria Butina’s escapades:

(1) Maria Butina is a gal who loves money, politics, and guns.

(2) She was settling down in the US, because at least the guns and politics part (including conservative politics) are far easier and more fun to pursue in America than in Russia.

(3) Since she is presumably still a Russian patriot, a Putin supporter, and an Americanophile, she would have naturally loved for the US and Russia to get along.

Thinking ambitiously, this might have also held out the prospect of an extension of American soft power – that is, what she would see as its wholesome, conservative element – into Russian politics. If this scenario had panned out, she might even have become… an “American agent” in Russia.

(4) Trump was the only Presidential candidate talking of improving relations with Russia – and he was a honest to goodness nationalist to boot!

(5) And her trump card into American politics? Her “Kremlin Connection.” Even though Torshin is nowhere near Putin’s inner circle.

Unfortunately, there was also a sixth part that she failed to account for:

(6) The US is also substantially run by gray bureaucrats, spies, and policemen – the Deep State – and they need to keep the Russiagate narrative going at any cost, since they have invested so much into it.

Consequently, I am pretty sure that Maria Butina is now regretting playing her trump card very much, as opposed to getting the hell out of dodge as soon as Trump was elected.

Even so, if the above account is basically correct, consider for a moment what it implies about the state of American politics.

We have a Deep State that is so invested in its demented campaign against Trump that it is willing to imprison human rights activists and supporters of American values in pursuit of its objectives.

If this isn’t cause to fire Rosenstein, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, what could Russia do? Well, one powerful dominance move on Putin’s part would be to liberalize gun rights in Russia, perhaps under a “Butina Law.” Apart from increasing the liberties and security of ordinary Russian citizens, which may not be of the highest priority for many in the Kremlin, this would also offer a range of more tangible benefits.

First, by occupying a major Schelling point of global conservatism, it would reinforce Putin’s conservative credentials in the international sphere. Let’s be clear, Putin isn’t getting a pardon from neoliberalism.txt anytime soon, so he might as well go the full nine yards.

Second, it would help highlight American Deep State hypocrisy, and set American conservatives even further against the Blue Checkmark globalist elites, who are so consumed by Trump/Putin Derangement Syndrome that they would construct a fake case against a Russian champion of American values such as the 2nd Amendment in their pursuit of absolute power.

Failing that, one would at least hope that the Russian government denounces Butina’s imprisonment, and vigorously lobbies for her release. Consider tit for tat measures. It’s likely that any number of foreign journalists are American agents to a far greater extent than Butina was a Russian agent.

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. Dan Hayes says

    I knew from the getgo that Rosenstein was a Deep State operative, but I must now reluctantly conclude that Sessions is at the very least an enabler. Until this time I had supported Sessions for his immigration stances, but that is outweighed by his conscious or unconscious actions advancing the Deep State’s agenda. Trump is to pitied for the enemies surrounding him, unfortunately most of them his own appointees.

  2. Thorfinnsson says
  3. The US is also substantially run by gray bureaucrats, spies, and policemen – the Deep State

    … in alliance with the Chamber of Commerce types.

    Meanwhile, what could Russia do? Well, one powerful dominance move on Putin’s part would be to liberalize gun rights in Russia, perhaps under a “Butina Law”… increasing the liberties and security of ordinary Russian citizens*

    My estimation of Russia and Putin would certainly rise!

    *Of course, there would have to be stringent enforcement of “If guns, no Vodka” regulation. I am HIGHLY “libertarian” about gun laws, but even I am not a fan of highly inebriated people carrying guns in public.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Dl2QLkKOs
    That female is calm and cool as cucumbers. Her man hacks at another driver with an ax and then fires his pistol at the other car, and she just stands there like there is an argument about soccer going on! Man, Russian women.

  4. It’s where total American ignorance of the world and of other countries.

    They don’t seem to recognize their own cultural exports, and that this woman is trying to change law in Russia (not in America), in order to make Russia become more similar to America in this area.

    She herself had support in her campaign from John Bolton, which I wonder (with his recent position given by Trump) has something to do with focus on her.

    https://butina.livejournal.com/832071.html

    Something dumb though.

    When you are in any foreign country with some kind of visa, you have to be very careful about any legal issues, and not to comment or be involved in politics. Especially if you don’t fully understand subtlety of culture in the country.

    Americans will tell you they are welcoming gun support, and invite you to their events, and seem to be friendly (I guess a lot of Americans were inviting her to their events and supporting her campaign, which is how she went there). But as a foreigner to come inside the country, and be involved in this area, during current paranoia in America – outcome predictable.

  5. Ok I read the report published by the FBI.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1080766/download

    Kind of funny reading.

    1. They say she is sending these messages with what they call “Russian official” using her Twitter inbox.

    First of all, this is not (I imagine) how any “spy” in anywhere would behave, using Twitter inbox to do their “secret” communications.

    (They know US authorities can legally read all these messages).

    1. Secondly, messages sound like between two lovers (or at least talking in a very sentimental way with each other). So it seems from “Russian official”, it is a sentimental or romantic, not professional, relationship, with this woman.
    2. What they call “Russian Official” is apparently encouraging her to do kind of “informal diplomacy” and “soft influence”, in relation to “Prayer Breakfasts” (lol I didn’t hear of Prayer Breakfast before).

    Whole thing is amateurish. Very far from (it can be imagined) any professional “spy” would behave.

    4, Only law she contravenes (18 U.S.C. 951) – trying to do diplomacy, while not registering as a person related to government.

    She goes to events and trying to arrange diplomacy, while talking with “Russian official” who they message between each other in a romantic way on Twitter, and who provides funds for her .

    She is trying to do some harmless networking between officials in Washington (and even being open about her idea – and telling Americans this) what was the reason of her not registering? Something amateurish if she wasn’t just registered.

  6. What FBI call “Russian official” – who is encouraging her in a sentimental way, could have just registered her , as some kind of part-time worker connected to officials. Then nothing she (some harmless diplomacy attempts) does would contravene law.

    The idiots did not register her, while she was openly telling Americans that she could help arrange meetings with officials.

    Her legal problem is that you are supposed to register your status with the American government, before you do any diplomacy activities in contact with another government.

    The law they are going to prosecute her with is:

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/951

    The problem is just that her sponsor does not register her (and they both seem ignorant of American law). There’s no “secret plan” either – just two amateurish people who communicate on Twitter and didn’t do paperwork before this diplomacy attempt. Maybe “Russian official” – simply did not actually have any actual official powers, to get her registered.

  7. Hey maybe Karlin is just better off just buggering back to America if keeps trying to transplant Protestant individualism into Ortohodoxy? I mean he may be in Russia but is psychological OS is basically American, so maybe he should go back to that place? I mean a lot of immigrants are unhappy in their adopted homelands and are better off going back.

  8. “Russian official”- who she is open about her friendship to, and posts ceaselessly on her instagram pictures with.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/uM4G58ReBo

    https://www.instagram.com/p/4Gcp4zxeL2

    https://www.instagram.com/p/0r6yayReLW

    https://www.instagram.com/p/09iO9PReP7

    Torshin – probably quite naively and amateurishly would like to improve relations with what he sees as the friendlier people in US, as Obama administration had frozen his assets in the US.

  9. Trump’s meeting with Putin did indeed turn out to be a damp squib,

    Yeah, but did the homies break down to do a sword dance though? Otherwise he ain’t “ya boi”!
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=runYPf4Q2g8

    Peace.

  10. Anonymous says

    Scary stuff what is going on in this country. Unlike Julia Ioffe, I was born in America and my Anglo-Saxon ancestors built America. I go to bed most nights feeling like a stranger in a strange land. The TDS is frightening. Even when I try to be optimistic I can’t imagine a scenario where this country is able to return to anything approaching normal. The Deep State and its operatives have shown themselves so clearly in this reckless conspiracy to bring down a democratically-elected President. Scary. I feel like Tom Cruise’s character in The Firm learning the truth about how the firm, he has committed himself to, operates. That was a book/movie which has a good ending. I’m not as sangunine about this period in American history.

  11. It is great to see Trump finally rise to fight for the American people and peace. It is sad to see that he was fooled into appointing traitors from the Deep State like Rosenstein and Coates. It was great to see Rand Paul stand up to career Mossad agent Wolf Blitzer who insisted on mouthing Deep State propaganda while pretending to conduct an interview. Note how he pretends political hacks represent the intelligence and law enforcement “community” as though they are unbiased democratic organizations:

    Senator Paul was great, until he broke down and said Russia hacked Hillary’s emails. There is no evidence of that, as President Trump explained, and even Assange assured us that it was not the Russians, but DNC leaker Seth Richards. And even former NSA expert Binny explained at Unz that evidence shows it was an insider. Anyway, here is Rand putting up a fight for the American people against the Deep State, followed by Assange explaining the Deep State, and finally the assassination of DNC leaker Seth Rich. The Deep State tells you none of this, but bombards you with “news” about great deals at their CIA outlet Amazon.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqCVNgz9Yzs

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbT3_9dJY4

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKawchvHsEg

  12. Sad for the girl – she has just some kind of sentimental relationship with Torshin.

    And he (not understanding America), has encouraged her to do some (what seems to them) harmless diplomacy when she was there as a student, and which connect with their mutual activism in gun issues. And they do it without giving her any official registration or documentation with the embassy, at a time while America is in a process of paranoia about anything with Russia.

    • It’s typical lack of understanding of culture in the West, of rich guys of his generation. They think by networking a few times with people “at the top” in the West – they will suddenly like him and restore friendly relations.

  13. Mark James says

    Buttina is Russia’s most winsome spy since…Anna Chapman:
    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/anna-chapman-instag
    ram-trump

  14. I too, like another poster stated, feel like a stranger in this country. I’m from the same stock as the people who founded and built america. Now, this country is overrun with non whites increasingly hostile to white, perverse lifestyles, addicted to Hollywood, and a government gone rogue.
    I see no happy conclusion to the wild course this country is on. In fact, I’m reading prepper websites.
    It very well may come to that.
    I am certain the government is going to use a false flag operation to take our guns.

  15. Felix Keverich says

    (1) Maria Butina is a gal who loves money, politics, and guns.

    (2) She was settling down in the US, because at least the guns and politics part (including conservative politics) are far easier and more fun to pursue in America than in Russia.

    I’m sorry, but this just smells like “honeytrap spy” to me – Russian intelligence still does this thing. Granted, the woman in question doesn’t look particularly hot, but then they don’t have to be.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8923568/Katia-Zatuliveter-from-Russia-with-love-but-strictly-no-spying.html

  16. Crimson2 says

    The NRA is a seditious organization and it’s going to be great to watch them get destroyed.

  17. Assange NEVER said Seth Rich was the leaker. People are drawing their own conclusions ….. without evidence.

    Ron Paul very rational …
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEJ3cG46X-c
    USA: ‘Trump is going in the right direction’ – Ron Paul on Helsinki summit

  18. But … she didn’t honeytrap anyone?

    (Wasn’t there a movie about that with the woman from Hunger Games recently? HuffPo probably lurved it)

  19. Felix Keverich says

    As a I understand it, she has been living in America for years – surely she slept with somebody there? These broads always manage to get laid, but whether they actually manage to collect useful information is less clear. Anna Chapman was hooking up with some 60 year old Jewish democratic donor, that’s the most “progress” she has ever made in the US.

  20. Read the FBI document.

    She’s definitely not a “spy” for a profession – Torshin and her are writing their plan to each other on Twitter (a competent “spy” communicates through a website the US authorities can read, using account of your own name?), and in romantical sounding messages between each other.

    Also intention is diplomacy/lobbying.

    Torshin is sponsoring her, and they want to network with American important people through the gun activism, and arrange meetings of them with officials.

    US is now prosecuting her for not registering as a foreign agent working for government (Torshin was too dumb to register her, or get her some diplomatic or lobbying position, even though she was openly telling Americans her ideas to arrange meetings with government official).

    Their behaviour is somehow idiotically amateur or naive, lacking understanding of American law, and their relationship open to public on her social media. Messages claimed to be theirs by FBI, are also showing them as delusionally imagining their diplomacy/lobbying as something that would make some serious impact.

  21. Torshin and her are writing their plan to each other on Twitter (a competent “spy” communicates through a website the US authorities can read, using account of your own name?)

    Spies- should at least make some kind of effort for the FBI in the past.

    “The FBI must have been clapping its collective hands when it discovered the primitive radio techniques the Russians were using: high-speed ‘burst transmissions,'” writes SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein. “The Cold War-era technique requires the sending party to record a coded Morse code message on a tape, then shoot it through the air in a millisecond. They were easy picking for the FBI, once it knew where to listen.”

    https://www.wired.com/2010/06/alleged-spies-hid-secret-messages-on-public-websites/

  22. Pat Kittle says

    Wow, the (((media))) sure want war between the world’s 2 biggest primarily White countries.

    Of course I’m not saying (((they))) promote White genocide or anything like that, of course.

  23. polistra says

    If you want to describe Butina as an agent, she’s an agent of NRA operating against Russia, not an agent of Russia operating against America. As always, Deepstate turns everything backwards.

  24. Seamus Padraig says

    You know, if she wanted to avoid prosecution under the FARA law, all she had to do was join AIPAC.

  25. Tom Welsh says

    “A criminal complaint was unsealed today in the District of Columbia charging a Russian national with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General”.

    I look forward to seeing the Russian government charge every single agent of the USA within Russia with the same crime(s).

    The downside is that they would have to build a lot more prisons. Or maybe they could reopen some of the old Siberian labour camps.

    After all, treason is a serious crime; and it seems that Americans believe you do not have to be a citizen of a nation to commit treason against it.

  26. anonymous coward says

    What’s so “un-Russian” about guns? Russians love guns.

    That said, we love gun discipline even more than guns, and banning guns is easier than enforcing gun discipline on retards.

  27. sudden death says

    And still folks like you see nothing wrong when Russia is gleefuly killing white christian right wing leaning Ukrainians all the time and often are using their remnant Asian slaves such as Buryats for that. How that is not supporting the real white genocide?

  28. “right wing leaning Ukrainians”

    Lol. When they are not being recycled in endless pockets somewhere in Donbass for the glory of their hooknosed satraps in Kiev and pseudonazi shabbos goyim leaders a little closer, they are gastarbeiting in Russia en masse. I guess that is where dem ebil russkies are gleefuly genociding them so thoroughly.

  29. Begins at 14:30. Good stuff on Russia and US intelligence.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-VFPLPT4xU

  30. Hyperborean says

    First, by occupying a major Schelling point of global conservatism, it would reinforce Putin’s conservative credentials in the international sphere. Let’s be clear, Putin isn’t getting a pardon from neoliberalism.txt anytime soon, so he might as well go the full nine yards

    While this would probably anger American and European Liberals and it sounds fun on an emotional level, I think your idea about taking reciprocal actions against hostile American journalists is more concrete.

  31. Trump is to pitied for the enemies surrounding him, unfortunately most of them his own appointees.

    Exactly correct. Trump needs to clean house, which should have been done day one. He has exacerbated the problem by appointing obvious members of the Deep State. It is hard to believe someone could be as dumb as Trump appears to be by his appointments….or he is part of the Deep State.

    I knew from the getgo that Rosenstein was a Deep State operative, but I must now reluctantly conclude that Sessions is at the very least an enabler.

    He needs a mass firing in the DOJ including the FBI, including Mueller , along with all who disagree with his every move, including the military. Either he has convictions or he does not. The worse that can happen is that his enemies will remain his enemies.

  32. nothing like a smoking gun or a hot chick to idistract.this means that trump showed Putin the evidence.the 12 Russian hackers are next

  33. Pat Kittle says

    Yes indeed, thanks for (((your oh-so-heartfelt concern))) for the goyim.

    Funny how (((you war criminals))) are always happy to keep the goyim killing each other, even if (((you))) have to support “neo-Nazis” to do it:
    — [ https://www.sott.net/article/289219-Israel-shows-its-hand-How-the-Israel-lobby-helped-protect-the-neo-Nazis-of-Ukraine ]

    The goyim know.

  34. One sad parallel between the USA and Russia, is that they are the two largest per-capita-jailing nations in the world … USA judicial malice and corruption is so little known due to Google etc media suppression, it has now ensnared this naive pretty Maria Butina

    Whereas a norm of ‘civilised’ (Western Europe etc) countries is jailing about 1 per 1000 citizens, in the USA and Russia it is about 1 out of 150 … 25% of all the world’s prisoners are in jail in the USA, around 2.3 million people … Russia’s jailing ratios are close to the same, even after Putin has graciously early-released some hundreds of thousands, something that never happens in the USA … Heavy-pot-smoker-in-youth Obama, never let go all those tens of thousands of blacks jailed for toking like Obama did

    It seems that residents of the USA, are quite unaware that their own mass-jailing legal system, is quite unlike what is represented in Hollywood movies, and portrayed in the media which serves the judge-bribing oligarchy

    So victims like this Russian woman Maria Butina, don’t understand or fear it, until the system hits them, and then it is too late

    With so much corruption both in jailing and in having US courts confiscate assets for politically-connected parties … the US system is habituated to corruption and railroading people whenever there is political or economic motive

    In reality, almost no one in the USA gets a ‘jury trial’, tho all accused get a ‘lawyer’, who is for the poor typically a US gov employee, under extortion threat to help jail the target, or else lose his job … USA federal courts have a higher conviction rate than Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich … 99% of all appeals to the US Supreme Court, are simply denied without any hearing

    Tho there is a lot of crime by blacks, the person arrested is often not the one who did the crime … the judge prevents evidence of innocence from being shown in court (‘file an appeal if you don’t like it’) … and the poor black guy is told by his lawyer, ‘Plead guilty you get 3 years, go to trial the judge will sentence you to 25 years, what do you want to do’ … the guy pleads guilty and gets 7-10 years … and then files a useless appeal from the prison cell, an appeal ignored or denied

    The techniques used to jail blacks, are used to steal assets from whites in business or divorce cases, and to target foreigners whenever a scapegoat is needed

    Increasingly, smart Europeans avoid living in or even travelling to the USA, as the risk of its legal-judicial corruption becomes increasingly known in upper crusty circles

    But the average person can easily fall into the traps, as this Russian woman did

  35. sudden death says

    Also folks like you see nothing wrong when your president’s daughter is married to a Jew and is converted to Judaism while president Donald “blame America first” Trump now is supporting Israel at every possible turn while having that Jew as one of the most closest aides?

    That is really truly spectacular 🙂

  36. The US is also substantially run by gray bureaucrats, spies, and policemen – the Deep State – and they need to keep the Russiagate narrative going at any cost, since they have invested so much into it.

    The rise of the phrase “Deep State” in the English language, in the past two[?] years, may be the biggest single blow against Capitalist Liberal Democracy of the past several decades. Two simple words give people the mental equipment to criticize democracy — cleanly and gracefully — that they long lacked (especially as the term “plutocracy” is rather obscure and not much used.)

    I believe Steve Sailer was critical to be emergence of the phrase Deep State. Here is an early use of the phrase in a Jan. 2016 Sailer post (he still uses quotation marks for it); a review of a then-recently-published book whose title included ‘Deep State.’

  37. Yep.honeytrap.watch for names and faces of 12 Russian hackers next.

  38. Verymuchalive says

    We have a Deep State that is so invested in its demented campaign against Trump that it is willing to imprison human rights activists and supporters of American values in pursuit of its objectives

    First of all, the American Permanent State cares not a jot for “American values”. The Constitution is just verbiage to them.
    Secondly, their campaign against Trump truly is demented. Many of the Permanent State operatives seem actually to believe this nonsense. That’s the truly disturbing part.
    That being the case, I feel they will want to prevent Trump serving his full term. Impeachment or assassination looms. As they want to discredit him, the former seems the most likely, using trumped up charges ! However, this is not something I would want to bet on, AK.

  39. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    @Dmitry

    “Prayer breakfasts” are a common and (as a non-Protestant Christian myself) hilariously kitschy part of American Protestant right-wing politics. They are usually on the same side as me, though, so I restrain my sarcasm.

  40. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Typical Rand Paul. He puts up a good fight for reality, but always keeps that one foot back. Guess it’s politics.

    Hopefully he is just keeping his powder dry for a tougher future.

  41. Verymuchalive says

    You are right about smarter Europeans avoiding travelling to the US, unless they actually have to. I’ve not been back to America since Bush minor introduced the draconian and invasive airport security laws.
    However, you are wrong about the Russian incarceration rates. Average Western Europe rates are about 100 per 100,000 ( 1 per 1000), it is true. America has 655 per 100,000 ( 1 per 153 ). Russia has admittedly a high rate 411 per 100,000 ( 1 per 243 ), but nowhere near the American rate.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

    Also Bear in mind ( ho, ho) that the Russian homicide rate is twice that of the US. Indeed, Russia has the highest homicide rate of any industrialised country ( 10x the average W European country ). The incarceration rate, by comparison, is actually quite niggardly ( very few of them in Russia, either.)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

  42. Only time for a quick scan. Yesterday saw Ms. Butina’s name mentioned on the national TV news. I thought: WTF?

    America does politically motivated police investigations. America does politically motivated prosecutions. Simple as that.

    (I was placed under investigation once. Thoughtcrime? Writing and public speaking. Motivation? Sense of civic duty. A friendly tipped me off. Honey traps, money, a rough-up were tossed at me. I was askeered, you betcha. Even if an indictment doesn’t result, chances are you’ll be blackened by the mere fact of having been placed under investigation. I got out of the civic dog house eventually, but it took a long time, and a whole lot of situational awareness.)

    I get it. I’m supposed to think of Russia and Russians as my “enemy”. America’s propaganda and military interventions in other countries’ beeswax ought to be ignored, because we wear the Superman shield on our skivvy shirts.

    I agree with the comments above. America’s constitution is pulped. Ditto, our onetime tradition of fair play back in the Stone Age, and minding our own business. If Martians are running partisan ads in the States, so what? Let the media expose the source, and let the voters discount appropriately.

  43. Let her test her own medicine!

  44. Hippopotamusdrome says

    accidentally killed him

    How was killing him an accident? Is there some way to disable an attacker with a knife without harm?

    If she had had a gun, it would have been enough just to show the gun

    Did he have the Death Star plans? No? Then we don’t want him alive.

  45. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    I agree with you that less hardened criminals alive is generally a good thing.

    With that said, calm down there, chief. Unless you’ve been in a situation where displaying or discharging a firearm is literally a life-and-death situation, it is best to reserve judgment.

    But Ms. Butina’s main point – that displaying a firearm is often (usually?) enough to stop a would-be attacker – does seem to be true.

    On the other hand, as YouTube gun expert Paul Harrell likes to say, real stats on self-defense gun use are a bit hard to come by here in America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HXCMjZJRRw

  46. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Anatoly (or other Russians/Russophiles),

    I’m not an expert on the history of gun culture in America, but being that I grew up in rural America (where an attitude of frontier self-sufficiency did and does – Thank God – still does exist to degrees), I’ve been around firearms my entire life. The normal rural American’s attitude (which was normal for all before organized anti-gun leftist bulls***) for guns is, “A gun is a tool – no better or worse than the man using it.”

    With that said, there is a distinction to be made between the average 19th and early 20th century American’s experience with guns: it’s a much more politicized experience today. Even for those of us who use guns in regular life (I grow my own vegetables, and so the raccoons simply need to be liquidated), it is still tempting to go into like a kind of right-wing “virtue posturing.” That is where the “tacticool” thing starts, in my opinion. Also, guns are still seen (correctly) as one of the last ways for Americans to act like our thoroughly awesome ancestors and not just like a bunch of city boys.

    Anyway, here’s my question. Is today’s Russian mainstream anti-gun sentiment a Soviet relic? Or was there also such a problem (revealing my bias with “problem”) before the godless barbarians took over?

    I’d be very curious to know about the history of Russian hunting. Hunting was very crucial in giving us a strong tradition with firearms. Here in America, I think we have it very lucky. Game was always seen as a means of survival, and hunting was common, affordable, and widespread. Once industrial living made hunting a bit more of a luxury (though it’s becoming more vital for some of us with today’s cost of living!), we developed the “North American system of wildlife management” which sees hunting as a mostly state-level, user-pay common resource for the residents that generates recreation revenue for the states . I’m not at all egalitarian in most of my outlook, but, by gosh, I do love this country’s hunting tradition. The bastards can’t take that away from me, period.

  47. Hmm if indeed the NRA is an seditious organization (which its not) then we will need all our guns, for its of course people like you who rather rather live on their knees then stand on their feet and fight, or even attend a demonstration, unless it was one sponsored for and by the government, and just a tip you will never live long enough to see the NRA destroyed>>>

  48. Felix Keverich says

    But is there any reason we should care? Looks like an enterprising slut, that got into trouble for being enterprising and dumb.

    If this Torshin guy has any decency, he will pay for her legal defense. But Karlin should calm down IMO.

  49. JudyBlumeSussman says

    The US is also substantially run by gray bureaucrats, spies, and policemen – the Deep State

    The US is substantially run by gay bureaucrats, spies, and policemen – the Deep State

  50. Reactionary Utopian says

    Great piece! I’m ashamed of laughing so much as I read it, being as that poor girl’s in jail (hopefully, she’s bailed out, at least). And, damn, she’s hotter’n a pistol, so to speak. If I were thirty years younger and single … but I’m not. Sigh!

  51. Of course this doesn’t apply to people from the Congo, Mexico or most other countries.

  52. Also Bear in mind ( ho, ho) that the Russian homicide rate is twice that of the US. Indeed, Russia has the highest homicide rate of any industrialised country ( 10x the average W European country ).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

    Those numbers are old by now. Russia’s homicide rate is at 5.7 /100 000 so far in 2018 and will most likely drop lower by the end of the year. Pretty close to the US. And considering the way things are going in Russia homicide rates will drop to (current) Western European levels in a couple of years.

  53. The American Deep State is evil. The Neocons are evil. Liberal interventionists, Liberal imperialists, are evil.

  54. It is self-evident that Seth Rich was the Wiki leak. The private investigator and former DC homicide detective hired by Rich’s family said the proof is on Rich’s laptop, which remains locked up somewhere by the DC police, and Feds show no interest. Rich was an IT guy for the DNC. And then Assange oddly offers a reward in a common “robbery” in which nothing was stolen. And the best proof is the Deep State corporate media refuses to touch this story, except for Fox News, until it got sued for pursing this truth.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/08/a-new-twist-in-seth-rich-murder-case/

    “In dismissing the possibility that Rich was the leaker, mainstream media outlets often ignore one of the key reason why some people believe that he was: Shortly after his murder, WikiLeaks, which has denied receiving the emails from the Russian government, posted a Tweet offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the solution of the mystery of who killed Rich.

    Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and publisher, brought up Rich’s murder out of context in an interview with Dutch TV last August. “Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks,” Assange said. “As a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.”

    Pressed by the interviewer to say whether Rich was the source of the DNC emails, Assange said WikiLeaks never reveals its sources. Yet, it appeared to be an indirect way of naming Rich, while formally maintaining WikiLeak’s policy. “

  55. Seamus Padraig says

    And the Russians effectively no longer have a death penalty either, so, ceteris paribus, they should have even more lifers than the US.

  56. Johnnie Walker Read says

    The problem is the American deep state is doing all in it’s power to rip away Americas last few remnants of freedom and turn it into Trotsky’s/Lenin’s/Stalin’s Bolshevik Russia. Anyone who thinks anyone in REAL power in the United States gives a tinker’s damn about her citizens rights needs to have their head examined.

  57. Democrats: Putin conspires with NRA not to take Americans’ guns away.

    I personally think the NRA needs to make a statement about this. If she needs $ her attorney should consider a kick starter go fund me.

  58. Johnny Rico says

    Are you trying to say the last movie you saw was Hunger Games? Have you seen them all? Lol.

    Not my thing. I don’t check HuffPo for movie reviews, so I can’t say. But Red Sparrow was a decent two hours of spy thriller. Fair amount of brutal torture and Jennifer Lawrence gets very naked.

    The story is, of course, completely improbable but it is based on the novel by retired CIA operative Jason Matthews – so I’m sure some of the stuff happened somewhere at sometime…maybe. The real-life espionage game seems pretty tedious and unexciting with the occasional poisoning (that didn’t really happen).

    https://youtu.be/oBr0vK8tR5w

     

    And also, Maria Butina used to be fat.

    I’m fat. – Maria Butina’s Blog

  59. redmudhooch says

    The real “meddlers” that meddle in every single election in America, and the world. Yet not a word about (((them))) from the (((media))) or puppets in DC. Sad!

    https://www.mintpressnews.com/psy-group-to-black-cube-israels-role-in-global-cyber-election-meddling/245819/

    PSY-Group to Black Cube: Israel’s Role in Global Cyber-Election Meddling

    When it comes to provable election meddling, including social media campaigns to smear politicians, Israel has become the “go to” place for politicians to seek election victory through guile and deceit.

    Those US and British politicians who are bashing Russia for foreign “election meddling” could use a more honest set of talking points. It is Israel, not Russia, China, or North Korea, that hosts a blossoming industry of cyber-election meddlers who operate from corporate offices in Tel Aviv, Cyprus, London, Washington, and Tortola. Most, if not all, of these firms, received their start-up funds from Israeli government-backed business development venture capital funds, some of which are solidly linked to right-wing American financiers like Robert Mercer, Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson, and Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

    The US media, subjected to a constant barrage of pressure from the all-powerful Israel Lobby, has refrained from reporting that when it comes to provable election meddling, including social media campaigns to smear politicians, Israel has become the “go to” place for politicians to seek election victory through guile and deceit.

    Israel “beta-tested” its social media manipulation software tools when, in 2006, it premiered “Give Israel Your United Support” (GIYUS) program and its associated Megaphone desktop computer article and commentary monitoring tool. The Israelis wanted to influence any bad press it received because of its 2006 surprise attack on Lebanon.

    Pro-Israeli volunteers around the world, who became known as “hasbara trolls,” disrupted websites take a number through various means. Options included the use of profanity on forums and chat rooms, especially toward the original poster of an item. But more than often, the infiltration took the form of posting extraneous information to detour the commentary thread away from uncomfortable subjects and promoting Israeli propaganda posted by dubious websites connected to the Israeli state.

  60. redmudhooch says

    Know they won’t touch it? Seth Rich works for Israel, Mossad. And he is not dead. But yes, he is the “leaker”. Just Israels way of getting back at Democrats/Clinton for the Iran deal.

  61. Yo Tolle, what do you think about Benedict Donald backing your boy Putin up? He said his denial of the CIA reports was “strong and powerful.”

  62. Media coverage of this story today in places like CNN and New York Times, is reporting it as if they are spies, like another Anna Chapman.

    CNN is calling her a “Russian agent” secretly infiltrating the Republican Party – lol, embarrassing for the professional reputation of actual agents.

    Although the fact FBI is focusing on her, is probably also indication they can’t find any real people.

    Reading FBI report and US law – it is obvious they are both idiots, arranging their plan of amateur diplomacy and networking through Twitter, because they want to improve relations with America, while not knowing US law about this.

    She was not trying to hide their diplomacy/lobbying – telling openly two Americans she could try to arrange meetings with government officials.

    All this activity is legal in American law, if they register her with US Attorney General as a person affiliated with Russia and say that Torshin was providing some funds for her. You’re allowed to work as an agent for another government in America, if registered.

    Torshin also apparently did not pay for her to have to study on any substantial English course, before she went there.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyBspPEPejI

    Whereas a real agent has had a lot of English classes, but somehow very fake.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbFyIoHlLFo

  63. Johnny Rico says

    Hilarious. Thanks for posting that. Are there any laws or police in Russia? Russians are also horrible drivers.

    That video makes Russia look like Liberia or any run-of-the-mill, third-world shit-hole. Bunch of drunk thugs in tracksuits hanging out everywhere. Does anybody work?

    Those cameras ostensibly capture license-plate numbers but nobody seems to care if they get viddied pulling out a 9-mm in traffic and shooting out everybody’s headlights. WTF

  64. Daniel Chieh says

    Troll breeding season.

  65. The Russian Empire, like most European countries, had very liberal gun laws, with no significant restrictions on sales, possession, or open carry.

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/chelyabinsk-gun-shop.jpg

    Chelyabinsk gun shop around 1900.

    They were also widely available. You could buy a Nagan or Browning for 16-20 rubles.

    After 1905, you needed the permission of the local head of police to buy pistols and revolvers, but this was a very quick affair and granted as a matter of course, so long as you weren’t an actual criminal or member of radical organizations. Considering the context of the time – (thousands of assassinations of government officials during this period), this was not unreasonable. There were no laws on hunting rifles at all until 1917.

    It was the Soviets who began confiscating private weaponry from 1918. Pistols and revolvers were restricted to Communist Party members, as befits a caste society, and would only be allowed for narrow classes of people thereafter. Hunting rifles and shotguns were only available to registered hunters – a lengthy, bureaucratic process to this day.

    In 1935, even knives were forbidden: “Prohibit the manufacture, storage, sale and wearing of daggers, Finnish knives and the like of cold weapons without the permission of the NKVD in the established manner” (Article 182). That’s right: BASED Stalin had the same attitude to knives as Sadiq Khan and British bobbies.

  66. Prester John says

    At least he’s trying. Didja catch Paul Ryan’s recent pearls of wisdom?

  67. Correct.

    Moreover, US homicide rate has been rising due to the Ferguson effect, and was already at 5.3/100,000 in 2016. Consequently, its likely already higher than Russia’s.

    Of course this is still not acceptable, since the murder rate in the US excluding Blacks would be around 2.0-2.5/100,000.

  68. The rise of the phrase “Deep State” in the English language, in the past two[?] years, may be the biggest single blow against Capitalist Liberal Democracy of the past several decades

    I think ‘Shadow Government’ works better, particularly with normies, but hopefully you are right.

  69. Verymuchalive says

    To AK
    Are you sure? Wikipedia gives 2016 figures for both Russia (10.82) and America (5.35). If the current rate for Russia in 2018 is 5.7, what are the reasons for the precipitous and very recent decline in homicides ? Are there any websites ( in English ) which deal in these matters ?

  70. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Yes, unfortunately, I did.

    The mendacious nerve of these SOBs would be funny if this situation wasn’t so scary.

    To quote that Jew Paul Newman, I’m disgusted with “Mendacity!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTWqUhvqXx8

  71. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Thank you, sir. Very interesting. We Americans (at least if I’m any indication….) typically have an impression that Europe was always commie towards guns.

    But my own home state – PA – proves this wrong in part. The famous “Kentucky long rifle” was originally developed in Pennsylvania by gunsmiths who brought their craft with them, with little interruption, from the German lands. And these people were not particularly rich either. Just average folks. So clearly the use of guns was more widespread in Europe than we sometimes imagine, and not just contained to the powerful landowners and aristocrats.

    As for hunting rights, I’m assuming that Tsarist Russia, in comparison to western Europe, might have had more ease of access to hunting for common folks if just because there was so much more available land than there was in Europe. Just a guess, though.

    That’s right: BASED Stalin had the same attitude to knives as Sadiq Khan and British bobbies.

    Yes, but if Solzhenitsyn is right, at least Stalin was nice enough to let those fine young vory in the camps keep their knives, since those nice young men served a clear purpose for the state: scaring the bejeesus out of the political prisoners.

  72. Come on . Ukraina is Ukraruina , is the biggest shithole of Europe , and one of the biggest shitholes of the world thanks to the yankee coup d`etat , the Maidan , thanks US .

    ” Fuck the EU ” said Victoria Nuland ( US State Department ) when she organized the nazi coup d`etat in ukraruina for sole the benefit of US . With the Maidan : ukraruina was ruined , thanks US , the US screwed Russia ,thanks US , and the US secrewed the EU , thanks US .

    But what is the US benefit of so much ruin ? , not that much , just helping a nazi vicious regime , that even forbids the russian language and culture in eastern and central ukraruina ? , just helping a regime that completely ruined ukraruina ( per capita year income down to 2000 euros / year , worse than Nicaragua ) , just desestabilizing Russia and the EU ? , Yankees are more and more moronic .

    Why the US , or the militaristic sector of the US , does so much destruccion in Europe ( Yugoslavia , Ukraina … Russia , EU .. and other places ) ????? , with so little benefits ???? Don`t the yankees realize that the EU and Russia are more and more fed up with the yankee hooliganism ? . With ” friends ” like the US who needs ennemies ,said recently Tusk , president of the European Council of the EU .

  73. Here’s a link to an excellent expose’ of our corrupt legal system…

    http://netk.net.au/whitton/ocls.pdf

  74. I have been writing about Russian demographics in general, including in the murder/suicide rate, for ages: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/topic/demographics/

    Last post: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-demographics-in-2018/

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/russia-mortality-from-vices-1990-2017.png

    These improvements are primarily driven by the continuing decline in Russia’s alcohol epidemic, which has traditionally accounted for a very large percentage of its “deaths from external causes”: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/out-of-the-death-spiral/

  75. Johnny Rico says

    The “Ferguson effect” is only an idea. It isn’t even a theory. There are a bazillion other factors.

    Where do such up-to-date statistics come from on the Russian murder rate? In your opinion, how accurate are those numbers? Asking for a friend.

    https://kilodocuments.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/butina_rifle.jpg

  76. Felix Keverich says

    Chapman’s views on “gun rights” are fully within the Russian mainstream. Karlin and Torshin are outliers here. Butina pretended to care about guns, because she sleeps with Torshin.

    BTW I found an Op-Ed, allegedly written by her in National Journal.
    https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-bear-the-elephant-13098

    What does a Russian person need to do get his article accepted by a US outlet? When Deripaska got published in Daily Caller, I assumed he bribed them. I find it odd, that Torshin could have connections like that, but doesn’t bother to learn US law.

  77. Felix Keverich says

    Why would your friend be interested in such esoteric subject? The data is from Russia’s national statistics service, you either believe it or you don’t.

  78. http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/2018/demo/edn05-18.htm

    Сведения о числе умерших от внешних причин смерти на 100 000 населения по субъектам Российской Федерации за январь-май 2018 года

    5.7/100,000 in first five months of 2018 (vs. 6.5/100,000 for the equivalent period last year)

    I see no reason for it to be inaccurate since it tallies with my own impressions and that of other people I talk to.

    How is the Ferguson Effect not real? The US homicide rate really has been going up, most of all in the black inner cities. That said, it has probably maxed out already.

  79. Johnny Rico says

    It’s just an expression we have. “Asking for a friend.” Never heard that? No big deal.

    I don’t have any experience with Russian statistics services. I’m just curious. I have experience with American statistics bureaus and systems and I work with a lot of these numbers so I always try to maintain a healthy skepticism.

    The numbers are never spot on. It isn’t a question of whether you believe it or don’t. It’s not a binary issue. For me, it is a question of how important the inaccuracies are for whatever issue you are looking at.

    What we have right here, right on this thread right now is the issue of whether the Russian murder rate is 10 or 5. And why? Some might consider that kind of a big deal.

  80. Daniel Chieh says

    National Interest is a bit of a tabloid with a mix of good and terrible articles – there is one article by someone who described his view of the US Navy, based on playing video games. I imagine its not that hard to float your article there, if you have even mild connections, you might even be able to spam their contacts to get published.

    I might be able to test this empirically, I know a fairly low-key journalist who produces mostly tabloid-level fare. I suspect he could get published there, too, just by spamming through here:

    https://nationalinterest.org/submission-guidelines

  81. Johnny Rico says

    Thank you.

    How is the Ferguson Effect not real?

    I, in fact, think it is. And I probably agree with you. But I’ve been examining crime rates and public perception of them and the relevant events for a very long time and I know that the cause-and-effect is very difficult to nail down and prove and that it is impossible to predict anything in this regard. Crime “happens” for a variety of reasons.

    It is fun blogging about, but if the murder rate rises and falls noticably over the next couple decades. Volatility, so to speak – then a historian writing 20 years from now might not include Ferguson in any analysis.

    Do we even have anything better than anecdotal evidence of increased or decreased policing in more than a few local areas? Hotspots. Can you really extrapolate changes in various police department policies to the nation as a whole?

    it has probably maxed out already.

    Careful. That’s a precidtion. Humans are not good at that.

  82. Felix Keverich says

    It’s just an expression we have. “Asking for a friend.” Never heard that? No big deal.

    An expression for asking awkward, embarrassing questions. Are you embarrassed? Feeling awkward right now? No big deal.

    What we have right here, right on this thread right now is the issue of whether the Russian murder rate is 10 or 5. And why? Some might consider that kind of a big deal.

    The numbers you see on various English-language websites usually come from international organisations. Those still rely on national statistics services, but they process data with significant delay. Data on Russian demographics is typically 5 years out of date. I also see websites that put Russia’s current population at 141 million and under, and I’m not sure where they got it from.

  83. Of course you realize that none of these assertions are evidence. At least Joe Lauria [Consortium News] didn’t make the all-too-common mistake of claiming that Craig Murray received any leaked material while in DC, or that he identified Rich as the leaker. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but it’s not “self-evident.”

    It seems you haven’t heard the latest twist, someone who claims he heard someone boasting about being the shooter who killed Rich. This was dredged up by one of the click-bait amateur investigators. And then you have the red-hooch type allegations. Sheesh.

  84. hyperbola says

    When is the FBI going to start going after the real treasonous “agents” in the US?

    Israel’s Foreign Agents Don’t Register, Why Should Russia’s?
    https://www.activistpost.com/2017/09/israels-foreign-agents-dont-register-russias.html

  85. Trump’s meeting with Putin did indeed turn out to be a damp squib

    i think Trump used it to fire the starting gun on Clinton’s trial – along with half the deep state

  86. Seamus Padraig says

    Hellary was opposed to the Iran deal. That’s why Obama had to wait for John Kerry to take over Foggy Bottom in order to get the Iran talks started.

  87. Johnny Rico says

    Thank you for the added information on the statistics, I appreciate it.

    An expression for asking awkward, embarrassing questions.

    Yes, originally, it was something people would add to their questions on self-help or advice-type forums to disguise the awkward question as coming from themselves. But more recently it is used in (I’m not sure if I am using the right word here, haha) an “ironic” manner, or humorous manner. Like a catchphrase. Like “LOL” or “jus sayin”

    Are you embarrassed? Feeling awkward right now?

    Sometimes, but not right now. Lol

    …actually, SUPER awkward after writing that comment 🙂

  88. Johnny Rico says

    Some humans suck at spelling.

  89. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says
  90. Joe Stalin says

    As Steve Sailer states: “Who can remember the past?”

    “Former CIA, NSA directors, retired generals, launch gun control group

    Former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, as well as several 3- and 4-star generals and admirals have launched a new effort to control the sales of guns in the United States. The effort is certain to attract attention after last weekend’s deadly mass shooting in Orlando, Florida. The group, which calls itself Veterans Coalition for Common Sense, is led by former CIA Director David Petraeus, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, and US Army General (ret.) Stanely McChrystal. The group’s advisory committee includes recognizable figures such as that of Admiral Eric Olson, who led US Special Operations Command from 2007 to 2011 and was the first US Navy SEAL to be appointed to four-star rank. Other advisory committee members include high-ranking veterans from every branch of the US Armed Forces, such as R. Adm. Jamie Barnett, Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney and Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Norman Seip.

    The group was formally launched at a press conference in Washington, DC, on Friday, just hours before Sunday morning’s mass shooting in Orlando. The organizers of the new effort said it came out of the 120,000-member strong Veterans for Responsible Solutions, a project spearheaded by USN R. Adm. Barnett in 2013, after the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, which killed 15 people. Another group that has offered support for the new effort, and will act as its parent organization, is Americans for Responsible Solutions, a non-profit organization that promotes gun control in compliance with the US Constitution. It was founded shortly after the 2012 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtwon, CT, which killed 28. The organization’s founders are former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly and his wife, Gabrielle Giffords, whose Congressional career was cut short in January 2011, after she and 18 other people were shot in Tucson, AZ.

    During their press conference on Friday, Veterans Coalition for Common Sense leaders said each had “swore an oath to protect our Constitution and the homeland”. But they were now “asking our leaders to do more to protect our rights and save lives”, they added. The group said they aimed to encourage their elected representatives to “do more to prevent gun tragedies”, including closing legal loops on gun background checks, strengthening gun control laws more broadly, and focusing on the mental health component that appears to be part of many mass shootings. In a separate development, another former Director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, said on Monday that “an assault weapons ban makes sense, at least to me”. In an interview with news site OZY, McLaughlin said that, in his personal view, “it is way past time for an assault weapons ban”.

    ► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 14 June 2016 | Permalink

    https://intelnews.org/2016/06/14/01-1918/


    Gun Control and the Plot for a Fascist Police State in America

    by David Hammer

    On January 17, 1989, Patrick
    Purdy, a 25-year-old with a seven-year law enforcement history of weapons
    violations, drug abuse, and sexual crimes, entered a school yard in Stockton,
    California carrying an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle. Within minutes, he had
    slaughtered five children and wounded twenty-nine more. Within days, the term
    assault rifle'' had entered the lexicon of all major U.S. news media. Within
    weeks, the most intense push for gun control since the 1968 Gun Control Act
    was passed in the wake of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin
    Luther King, was underway.
    By this spring, California had passed the most sweeping gun control law
    ever seen in the United States, banning outright some forty types of
    assault
    rifles.” In 22 other states, similar legislation was enacted or proposed. At
    the federal level, lifetime National Rifle Association member George Bush
    enacted a ban on the importation of forty-three types of semi-automatic
    rifles. By mid-summer, Bush’s Justice Department had released a set of
    draconian options'' for gun control, including such heretofore unthinkable
    measures as universal indentification cards with fingerprints and other data
    electronically imprinted. This card was to be {for everyone}, not just those
    owning guns. Also proposed was a national registration of all gun-owners and
    their guns.
    Led by the {Washington Post}, the liberal news media clamored incessantly
    for gun control, and launched attack after attack on the National Rifle
    Association, perhaps the single most powerful grassroots lobby in the country.
    California Congressman Fortney Stark charged that the NRA's fundraising
    practices were illegal and were aimed to
    exploit the vulnerable senior
    citizens of this nation,” and instigated an investigation by the U.S. Postal
    Service. Various state governments tried to get their hands on NRA membership
    lists, and there were even whispers that the dreaded RICO (Racketeering
    Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act might be applied.
    All of these unprecedented developments were presumably the fruit of
    natural outrage over the Stockton massacre. Or were they?

    Assault on the Republic

    Although the news media would have us believe that there are countless
    lone nuts'' out there in the population who might one day pick up a rifle
    and start blowing away America's political leaders or their fellow citizens,
    investigations into the Stockton and other massacres, as well as into the cry
    for
    gun control” which has followed in their wake, have established the
    following:
    1) All of the celebrated mass murderers or assassins of recent years, the
    John Hinckleys and David Berkowitzes, were controlled and deployed by either
    a) networks of brave new world'' psychiatrists like theNazi doctors”
    involved in the CIA’s infamous MK-Ultra project, or b) Satanic killer cults.
    Mass murderers and assassins so deployed are no more lone assassins,''
    than were those earlier
    lone assassins’:’ Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan,
    or James Earl Ray, charged with the murder of President John F. Kennedy, Bobby
    Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, respectively. The mere fact of a cover-up of
    essential evidence, as obviously happened in the JFK assassination or in the
    Stockton or Son of Sam mass murders, {proves} that these and similar cases do
    not merely involve lone nuts.'' Therefore, the chief rationale for gun
    control is fraudulent at the outset.
    2) Gun control is part of a plot to eliminate the constitutional republican
    form of government in the United States. The founders and sponsors of the gun
    control movement are in the thick of organizing other changes in law and
    administration, aimed at transforming the United States into a police state.
    In fact, they are most vociferous in their public calls for
    restricting
    democracy,” and revising'' or even scrapping the U.S. Constitution.
    Handgun Control, Inc., the leading gun control lobby, demonstrates the
    case; it was incorporated in 1974 and has been sponsored ever since by the
    powerful Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering. The
    firm's senior partner, Lloyd Cutler, through Project 1987 and the Committee
    for the Constitutional System, has worked ceaselessly for scrapping the U.S.
    Constitution, in favor of a British-style parliamentary system. Cutler is also
    a senior figure in the infamous Trilateral Commission, one of the most
    important subcommittees of the Eastern Establishment, which has openly called
    for
    restricting democracy.”
    3) The gun control movement has been massively aided and abetted by the FBI
    and the CIA, in a way that exposes the proclivities of these institutions to
    protect the interests of the political and banking Establishment, far more
    than those of the nation. This aid has been in part indirect, through covering
    up the true causes of the assassinations and mass murders which lend
    legitimacy to calls for gun control. But there is direct intelligence
    community involvement, as well: Handgun Control, Inc. was founded by a 25-year
    veteran of the covert operations division of the Central Intelligence Agency.
    The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects free speech; the
    Second Amendment protects the right of the citizenry to bear arms. These two
    Amendments were indissolubly linked in the minds of the Founding Fathers, who
    had just concluded a revolution against tyranny. Today, these two pillars of
    republicanism are under ferocious attack by those who would eliminate our
    constitutional republic.

    The Trilateral Agenda

    The plans to implement a police state in the United States have been openly
    recorded in the policy papers of the supranational Trilateral Commission,
    which, since its founding in 1973, has been one of the most important bodies
    dictating policy to successive U.S. governments.
    Composed of leading bankers, politicians, and businessmen from the U.S.A.,
    Western Europe, and Japan (thus its name, trilateral''), the Trilateral
    Commission was bankrolled by David Rockefeller and his liberal Eastern
    Establishment friends. Its first executive director was a then-obscure
    professor from Columbia University in New York, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in
    1979 drafted a plan for a one-world government under such rubrics as
    global
    strategies for international cooperation,” and a truly global world
    system.'' Brzezinski said the creation of this
    global community” would
    require two broad and overlapping phases. The first of these would involve
    the forging of community links among the United States, Western Europe, and
    Japan.... The second phase would include the extension of these links to the
    communist countries.''
    When Jimmy Carter became President in 1977, an astounding thirteen members
    of his administration were Trilateralists, out of a total U.S. Trilateral
    membership of only 65. Brzezinski was named Carter's National Security
    Adviser.
    The Trilaterals proposed a sweeping series of political and financial
    changes to usher in their desired
    global order,” many of which were
    contained in a series of policy papers issued in the mid-1970s, titled {1980s
    Project}. One of these, Crisis of Democracy'' by French sociologist Michel
    Crozier and Harvard academic Samuel Huntington, argued that,
    Democracy is
    only one way of constituting authority, and it is not necessarily a
    universally applicable one. In many situations, the claims of expertise,
    seniority, experience, and special talents may override the claims of
    democracy as a way of constituting authority.”
    The authors’ crucial point was that the coming economic collapse of the
    1980s and 1990s would necessitate restrictions on freedoms, and new forms of
    tyranny, to enforce cuts in the standard of living. Since a collapsing economy
    would inevitably produce political upheavals, the old style of constituency
    politics'' was untenable and must be scrapped:
    We have come to recognize
    that there are potentially desirable limits to economic growth. There are also
    potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political
    democracy…. A government which lacks authority … will have little
    ability… to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary.”
    Trilateral Commission member Lloyd Cutler, of the law firm Wilmer, Cutler,
    and Pickering, became Jimmy Carter’s White House counsel. Cutler had been
    chairman of the D.C. Commission on the Administration of Justice Under
    Emergency Conditions in 1968, and also in 1968-69, executive director of the
    National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, also known as
    the Eisenhower Commission.
    Established in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations in 1968, the
    commission called for radical restrictions on the right to bear arms. Its
    executive director was Jim Campbell, handpicked by commission chairman Lloyd
    Cutler from his own law firm. Campbell later incorporated the organization
    that has become the driving force behind gun control in the United States,
    Handgun Control Inc. Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering has guided HCI every step
    of the way to becoming a powerful national lobby. The firm has argued, for
    free, HCI legal cases all the way up to the Supreme Court.
    Campbell now sits on the board of the HCI’s associated tax-exempt
    foundation, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. His partner Cutler, a
    “consistent supporter over the years,” will soon join the distinguished
    advisory board of the center. (Cutler otherwise has busied himself as
    volunteer lawyer for the environmentalist Soviet espionage front, Greenpeace,
    in its lawsuit against the French government, over the 1985 sinking of the
    Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior.)

    Gun Control Lobby: Made in the CIA

    According to the official history of Handgun Control Inc., their
    organization began when a young man named Mark Borinsky, who had been mugged
    as a student in Chicago, came to Washington, D.C. and founded the National
    Council to Control Handguns. Later that year, the history continues, Borinsky
    was joined by a former DuPont executive, Pete Shields, whose son had been
    killed in the Zebra racial murders in San Francisco, and the organization just
    took off from there.
    There is only one problem with this official history, as expressed in the
    HCI’s promotional pamphlet–it is a lie.
    On the board of directors of HCI, as vice chairman, sits Edward C. Wells of
    Washington, D.C. Contrary to the fairy tale told in HCI handouts, it was
    Edward Wells who recruited Pete Shields, now HCI’s president and public
    spokesman; it was Edward Wells who led the tongue-tied Mark Borinsky around
    official Washington, to get the organization off the ground; it was Edward
    Wells who guided all the crucial early phases of HCI. Edward Wells also was a
    board member and early mover of the nation’s other major gun control lobby,
    the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. As his friend Jim Campbell of Wilmer,
    Cutler, and Pickering understated the matter, Ed was present at the
    creation.''
    Wells had a great deal of experience in getting things quietly organized.
    Before his retirement to take a job in
    public service”–the gun control
    project–Wells was a 25-year veteran of the Directorate of Plans of the
    Central Intelligence Agency, the Company's'' covert operations arm.
    As the Iran-Contra hearings made clear, this side of the CIA specializes
    in, among other things, setting up front groups. Those hearings also showed,
    via the case of veteran CIA operative Walter Raymond, who
    retired” to
    become Oliver North’s de facto controller at the National Security Council,
    that CIA retirements'' are often arranged to put some political distance
    between the
    retiree” and the Company.''
    Ed Wells himself recently described the early days of HCI to a New York
    journalist:
    I was the first unpaid volunteer, however you wish to put it,
    Executive Director. Now Mark [Borinsky, the ostensible founder of HCI] was at
    that time unable to give this job his full time, because he was holding down a
    relatively low level job in Washington. And as I say, he was quite a shy
    person. I was able to get enough people to join the board, with him of course
    because I always took him along and so forth, to make the organization look
    reasonably credible. … So Mark stayed around Washington and was frequently
    around with his ideas and was participating, I don’t want to give that
    impression [that he wasn’t doing anything]. He was very interested in
    fundraising and had some good ideas, no question about that. But not a public
    speaker nor the kind of person who could really get out in front of an
    audience or easily meet others involved. I don’t mean a shrinking violet …
    but in any event he is a rather reticent person and lacks self-confidence, I
    guess is the best way of putting it.”
    Though everything Wells said made it clear that there would have been no
    HCI without him, including the recruitment of his old Hotchkiss prep school
    mate and fellow Yale graduate Pete'' Shields, Wells was most careful to play
    down his name and role. And while most of those involved in HCI had compelling
    personal motives (Borinsky was mugged, Sara Brady's husband Jim was nearly
    assassinated, Pete Shields' son was murdered, etc.), Wells offers a thin-
    sounding motivation for his shift into this highly emotional fight:
    It was
    more of a question of wanting to do something in the public service area.
    Having sort of a determination not to seek a nine-to-five job when I got out
    of the Agency, and a desire to stay around Washington, really probably not
    much more than that.”
    Wells was not the only CIA-linked man involved in creating the gun control
    lobby. Former CIA chief William Colby, who decimated the CIA’s
    counterintelligence capability with his 1975 sacking of James Jesus Angleton
    and many of his staff, threw open his house for gun control fundraising
    parties and today serves on the board of the National Coalition to Ban
    Handguns. (More recently, Colby has been openly hobnobbing with the KGB in
    joint CIA-KGB meetings in California to discuss joint strategies'' to fight
    terrorism.)
    Colby was hardly impelled into the gun control movement by some
    longstanding commitment to curb violence. He had been, after all, the chief
    overseer of the bloody Operation Phoenix program which assassinated over
    50,000 Vietnamese. Later, (after
    retirement,” of course), he would be the
    lawyer for the infamous Australia-based gun-and-drug running Nugan Hand Bank.
    Nor does the list of CIA supporters of gun control end with Wells and
    Colby. HCI spokesman Greg Risch recently laughed a bit nervously when asked if
    the spooks'' (CIA agents) were supporting HCI, then said,Sure there are a
    lot of CIA people in it,” adding that there are quite a few “ex-CIA who
    donate to us.”

    Handgun Control, Inc.

    In November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas,
    Texas. The Warren Commission, ostensibly set up to investigate that murder,
    was in fact responsible–with the help of prominent commission member and
    former CIA head Allen Dulles–for covering it up. This marked a turning point
    in American life, and set the precedent for the political assassinations to
    follow.
    In 1968, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, Kennedy
    because he threatened to become President himself, and would not rest until he
    discovered his brother’s assassins, and King because he led a mass movement
    for civil rights and economic development.
    While the FBI and CIA handled the cover-up of the details of the
    assassinations themselves, Lloyd Cutler led the Eisenhower Commission that
    studied the causes'' of the Kennedy and King murders and resultant violence
    in American cities. Cutler's response to these murders, which had been covered
    up, if not perpetrated, by his friends in the Establishment, was a further
    step on the road to a police state--the recommendations for gun control.
    The CIA's Ed Wells explained how his founding of Handgun Control Inc. built
    on the earlier efforts of Cutler, et al.:
    It didn’t take us long to get
    caught up with Jim Campbell, who was the assistant to Lloyd Cutler, because
    Lloyd was the head of the committee which Johnson put together after the
    deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. That’s very important, that
    we were able to get the talents of those people, Campbell particularly. He had
    been the staff director for the commission which Cutler was the chairman of.
    Cutler was the overall chairman and so he got one of the bright young men in
    his law firm to be the director of it…. It [the commission] was on handgun
    violence I believe…. And then a series of recommendations came out of it,
    part of which were embodied in the 1968 Gun Act. That’s very important, I
    think. It wasn’t just Mark Borinsky getting beat up in Chicago at the point of
    a gun. This is something which did have prior history, but in effect we came
    in and piggy-backed on that.”
    Campbell volunteered his own reflections on the prior history: I was one
    of the incorporators of what is now Handgun Control Inc.; We created that in
    the early 1970s. A fellow [Borinsky] came into our office. He had been held
    up.... After he had been held up he went to the library and began to read
    about this and found our violence commission report and said, `Gee, I have a
    little bit of money here and uh, I would like to create some sort of
    organization to do a little something.' There was really no organized lobby or
    political center for gun control and he thought he ought to create it. And he
    created it on a shoestring. We created it on a shoestring. Ed Wells was one of
    the first people who sort of kept it going, he was the head of it for awhile,
    and kept it going in its shoestring days.''
    The shoestring days are over. Big corporations such as Corning Glass and
    Johnson Wax, and major foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller, are pouring
    in money, to the tune of millions per year, both to the HCI and into its tax-
    exempt spinoff, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, which churns out
    propaganda for gun control.
    One of the center's most recent activities was the production of an 18-
    minute videotape on the Second Amendment, featuring Jimmy Carter's former
    press spokesman, Hodding Carter. Wells noted,
    We hope to raise enough money
    to get that video cassette into every school in the country, K [kindergarten]
    through 12. We have gotten it in over half now. We have raised about $250,000
    now if I am not mistaken. It has been very well reviewed, and I think it will
    be used in most schools, year after year.”
    The Second Amendment, which specifies the right to bear arms, is of course
    the crux of the whole gun control issue. If it can be redefined for a
    generation or so of children, long-term victory for the gun-controllers is
    almost assured. The film was done in conjunction with the Bicentennial of the
    Constitution, one of Cutler’s favorite avenues for smuggling in changes to the
    U.S. Constitution. A chief adviser for the film was Cutler’s law partner, Jim
    Campbell. Said Wells, “I think he is acknowledged as one of the better
    informed individuals in the country on the whole question, both from a legal
    and a legislative point of view. A very thoughtful individual and a sort of a
    tiger. He knows the laws inside out.”

    The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, in its entirety, A
    well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
    right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.''
    Some sophists have claimed that, because of the mention of the militia, the
    right to bear arms is only a conditional right, in the context of a formal
    armed force. Yet the intent of the Founding Fathers--who considered that the
    militia was the entirety of the citizenry, armed and ready to respond to a
    call to mobilize--as this intent is expressed in the {Federalist Papers} and
    other locations, was precisely that this armed citizenry be a bulwark against
    tyranny, either directed from a foreign power, or, with their recent
    experience as subjects of Britain's George III in mind, from their own rulers.
    This function of the right to bear arms as the ultimate check to tyranny
    was emphasized by the National Rifle Association in a series of full-page ads
    in major newspapers in late June. Under the title
    The Right of the People to
    Keep and Bear Arms,” one ad showed a bloodied Chinese student at Tiananmen
    Square, surrounded by soldiers. Like the Chinese people, the ad emphasized,
    people in Soviet Georgia have no right to bear arms. The citizens of Georgia
    had had guns, but they were registered, as the U.S. Justice Department has
    mooted for all guns in America. On April 9, 1989, the Soviet government that
    had confiscated all private arms in Georgia, using the registration
    information, met a peaceful demonstration with force. Members of the unarmed
    crowd, old women and young girls, were slaughtered by Soviet troops with
    poison gas and sharpened spades.
    The NRA ad clearly implied that gun control is a step toward a police
    state, and is not something that can happen only in China or the Soviet Union,
    but could happen in the U.S.A. as well. The merest hint that a police state
    might emerge here drove Establishment media outlets wild. The NRA has
    surpassed its own record for world-class lunacy in its latest advertising
    message,'' ranted one {Washington Post} editorial.
    Yet the evidence of the U.S.A.'s slide into a police state is overwhelming.
    The most dramatic confirmation of such tendencies came with the frame-up and
    jailing on January 27, 1989 of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and six associates on
    spurious charges of mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy. The judge allowed
    the LaRouche Seven no defense, and the jury was packed with government agents
    directly tied to the
    Get LaRouche” task force which has been functioning
    for over 15 years.
    To this may be added the assault and breaking of limbs of the anti-abortion
    Operation Rescue activists in demonstrations around the country, as well as
    the use of the RICO statutes (designed for use against racketeers) against
    them; the orchestrated scandals and prosecutions of prominent TV preachers;
    the government assault on the trade union movement, as in the virtual
    government takeover of the Teamsters union; the frame-up of U.S. Congressmen
    through Abscam and Brilab and the hounding from office on the thinnest of
    pretexts of House Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho; and the
    federal government takeover of the savings and loan industry, claiming that
    “fraud,” not years of double digit interest rates, had destroyed that
    industry. As the S&L industry is destroyed, so are the prospects of affordable
    new housing for American families.

    The Maryland Laws

    Overt police state tactics, on top of the propaganda around the Stockton,
    Ca. massacre, were applied to achieve the most dramatic advance in gun control
    in recent years, the November 1988 defeat of an NRA-backed referendum in
    Maryland. This referendum would have overturned a gun control law, HB 1131, on
    so-called Saturday Night Specials, which had been jammed through the state
    legislature in the closing minutes of one session. Co-sponsored by a member of
    ex-CIA chief William Colby’s National Coalition to Ban Handguns, the law
    ostensibly was to restrict cheap, poorly made handguns. But it was so broadly
    worded, that it in fact could ban the sale of any handgun made after 1984. It
    also set up a nine-member board to decide what exceptions could be made to
    that law.
    Maryland’s Governor William Donald Schaefer wanted to see the referendum
    defeated and the bill stand, so he deployed his state police to make sure the
    referendum failed at all costs. The evening before the election, the police
    conducted a warrantless search of the referendum headquarters, which stopped
    the election-eve phone bank, terrorized workers, and generally disrupted the
    referendum’s get-out-the-vote effort. On election day, armed and uniformed
    police stationed at many polls passed out sample ballots urging defeat of the
    referendum, and harassed, injured, and even arrested pro-referendum poll
    workers on bogus charges. And although uniformed police were encouraged to
    speak out against the referendum during the campaign, Superintendent of State
    Police Elmer Tippett (scheduled to be chairman of the handgun review board)
    issued a formal order preventing any policeman in uniform from appearing on
    behalf of the referendum, or even identifying themselves as policemen when not
    in uniform. Meanwhile, Tippett appeared, in uniform, on TV shows to campaign
    against the referendum.
    Due to various intimidation tactics, only half the NRA and other pro-
    referendum pollwatchers scheduled for Baltimore, the major population center,
    showed up. There were reports of voting machines with levers that could not be
    pulled down for the referendum, a classic tactic of vote fraud. The harassment
    was so blatant that even the {Baltimore Sun} blasted police behavior in the
    raid, and demanded a grand jury investigation, noting that “police with
    political assignments are more dangerous than Saturday Night Specials.”
    Though the police with pro-gun control assignments were highly visible in the
    weeks before the election, the {Sun} strangely had waited until the day after
    it was all over, and gun control confirmed, to comment on the fact.

    What Are `Assault Rifles’?

    These police state tactics have been accompanied by a great deal of
    Goebbels-style lying, to brainwash people that guns must be controlled.''
    While the gun-control issue was formerly focused on handguns (as the names of
    the two gun control organizations indicate) because these were ostensibly the
    weapons of choice” of criminals, it seems that now the weapons of
    choice'' have shifted--just in the last year, mind you--to so-called
    assault
    rifles.”
    These assault rifles'' are alleged to be the drug dealers'weapons of
    choice.” But the figures published by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
    Administration (DEA), which has more to do with drug dealers than any other
    law enforcement body, show that out of 66 shooting incidents against DEA
    agents in 1988, only one involved an assault rifle, and that was overseas.
    There is good reason for that. In early February 1989, Lt. James Moran,
    commander of the Ballistic Unit of the New York City Police Department, told
    the {New York Times}, A rifle is not what usually is used by the criminals.
    They'll have handguns or sawed-off shotguns. You have more firepower with a 9-
    millimeter handgun than you do with an AK-47.... The rifle is big.... These
    drug dealers are more inclined to use the 9-millimeter pistol than go to a
    cumbersome AK-47 rifle.''
    Furthermore, according to the 1987 Uniform Crime Report, rifles were used
    in only 4 percent of all homicides, while cutting weapons of all sorts were
    used in 20 percent. If the gun control lobby wants to stop homicides, perhaps
    they should begin by banning carving knives.
    An
    assault rifle,” by definition, is a weapon capable of firing on
    either automatic (as long as the trigger is depressed, the gun continues
    firing) or on semi-automatic (where the trigger must be pulled for each shot).
    In other words, the chief characteristic of an assault rifle'' is that it
    functions like a machine gun. Machine guns are now virtually outlawed in the
    U.S.A., and no machine gun has been used in any of the celebrated mass
    murders, like the Stockton case.
    But what the gun control lobby is trying to outlaw are the tens of millions
    of regular rifles--which in the main are semi-automatics--that are in the
    hands of law-abiding citizens, by branding most or all of them as
    assault
    rifles.” A semi-automatic rifle fires one shot at a time, period. The semi-
    automatic action, as opposed to the old bolt action which required manual
    loading after each shot, has been in common use for most of the twentieth
    century. Whether a semi-automatic {looks} like a military weapon (assault
    rifle'') or not, is irrelevant to the function of the weapon. And it takes a
    skilled gunsmith to convert a semi-automatic to an automatic.
    The gun controllers are trying to classify semi-automatics as to whether
    they are used (or could be, or should be) mainly for
    sporting purposes.”
    But where in the Second Amendment is there any reference to sporting
    purposes''?
    There is a powerful argument for the right to bear arms, particularly these
    days, for self-defense. An estimated 2,000 felons are killed annually and
    another 15,000 wounded by civilians, in circumstances classified as
    excusable self-defense.”
    But the true reason for defending this right is that it is enshrined in our
    Bill of Rights, put there by the Founding Fathers who could foresee future
    dangers to our nation. For such eventualities, they said, the citizens had
    better have arms.
    The poet of freedom, ardent republican Friedrich Schiller, expressed the
    same principle in his play, Wilhelm Tell,'' regarding the revolt of the
    Swiss cantons against tyrannical Hapsburg power. Schiller opens the
    Ruetli
    oath” scene with the words, No, there is a limit to the tyrant's power,''
    and continues,
    As a last resort, when not another means is of avail, the
    sword is given him, The highest of all goods we may defend from violence.”

    The Satanic Threat

    After the Kennedy and King assassinations, and the 1981 attempt on
    President Reagan, the next most dramatic shootings used to justify gun control
    were the massacre of schoolchildren by Patrick Purdy in January 1989 in
    Stockton, California, and the 1976-77 New York City murders known as the Son
    of Sam'' killings, for which David Berkowitz was convicted.
    The NRA has often contended,
    Guns don’t kill people. People do.” Today,
    this should probably be amended to, Guns don't kill people. Satanists do.''
    The crucial feature of both the Purdy and Berkowitz killings was the link
    to Satanism, initially covered up in both cases. Satanists, aside from taking
    sadistic pleasure in doing evil for evil's sake, believe that human and animal
    blood contain
    energy,” and that the more blood that is spilled and the more
    pain and suffering that is inflicted upon their victims, the more energy''
    will be released to the control of the Satanists. Therefore, the first thing
    to look for, in any of the mass murders in the United States in the past two
    decades, is evidence of Satanic beliefs. From there, the investigation must
    proceed into the Satanic underground which harbors such mass killers.
    The Satanic literature in Purdy's room and the Satanic markings on his
    clothes, meant that Satanism was not an
    aberration” of the case, but the
    first thing to be investigated. This was precisely what gun-control advocate,
    California Attorney General John Van de Kamp ruled out, in his finding that
    racial hatred'' motivated Purdy.
    The initially successful coverup of the Satanic elements in the Berkowitz
    case came unraveled in part due to the work of investigator-author Maury
    Terry, as Terry recounts in his book, {The Ultimate Evil}. While Queens
    District Attorney Eugene Gold and others insisted that Berkowitz was a lone
    killer, Terry catalogues the evidence those officials suppressed, that more
    than one killer participated in each crime, and that Berkowitz himself acted
    as a member of a Satanic cult. Just before the first murder, Berkowitz wrote a
    warning to the police, suppressed by them for years:
    This is a warning to
    all police agencies in the tri-state area: For your information, a Satanic
    cult (devil worshippers and practitioners of witchcraft [sic]) … has been
    instructed by their high command (Satan) to begin to systematicaly kill and
    slaughter young girls or people of good health and clean blood. They plan to
    kill at least 100 young wemon [sic] and men, but mostly wemon [sic] as part of
    a satanic ritual which involves shedding of the victims innocent blood…. I,
    David Berkowitz, have been chosen since birth, to be one of the executioners
    for the cult.”

    Psychiatrists of the Brave New World

    On March 30 1981, the mentally disturbed John Hinckley opened fire on
    President Ronald Reagan as Reagan and his entourage stepped out of the Hilton
    Hotel in Washington. Within seconds, Reagan fell with a bullet lodged an inch
    from his heart; his press secretary, James Brady, fell with a bullet in his
    brain. In the tragedy’s aftermath, Brady’s wife Sara took up the gun control
    cause, and became the leading spokesperson for HCI. The episode gave a major
    boost to gun control efforts, predicated on the assertion that any nut, just
    like Hinckley, could just go get a Saturday Night Special and blow away the
    President.
    Yet, in the weeks after the shootings, an investigation by {Executive
    Intelligence Review} magazine demonstrated that Hinckley had been prepared for
    his deed through systematic behavior modification'' techniques applied by
    psychiatrists whom Hinckley regularly visited, in the towns of Evergreen and
    Lakewood, Colorado. Investigations also revealed that Hinckley had been for
    years a member of an organization heavily penetrated by the FBI, the National
    Socialist Party of America. In October 1980, he had been caught with several
    weapons in his possession, stalking President Carter, and presidential
    candidate Ronald Reagan. Hinckley was given a $62 fine and let go.
    Though the Nashville police provided his name and circumstances to the FBI,
    Hinckley's name was never added to the 25,000 person list of possible
    presidential assassins maintained by the Secret Service--an unthinkable
    oversight, particularly since he had been kicked out of the FBI-monitored
    National Socialist Party for recommending bombings and assassinations.
    Hinckley had been passed from one psychiatrist to another, his intentions
    and actions monitored at every point, but he was not the only one. The week
    after his attempt on President Reagan, one Edward Richardson was arrested en
    route to Washington, D.C. with a .32 pistol. With a background which law
    enforcement specialists said
    eerily paralleled” Hinckley’s, Richardson had
    sworn in a handwritten note, I will finish what Hinckley started. Ronald
    Reagan must die.'' Several other Hinckley clones emerged at the same time,
    with the same intention.
    The reality that those who deploy the assassins are some of the key
    sponsors of the gun control movement is most obvious in the case of Dr. Park
    Eliot Dietz, the FBI's top forensic psychiatry specialist. Dietz runs the
    Threat Assessment Group in Newport Beach, California, which maintains
    extensive computerized files on those judged likely to be mass murderers.
    Dietz, who is running operations against the LaRouche political movement,
    certified John Hinckley as a
    lone assassin,” which he, as a skilled
    psychiatrist, clearly knew to be a lie.
    A fanatical gun control advocate, Dietz has for the past two years been
    studying the NRA and related organizations in the gun lobby.'' According to
    the 1987 Annual Report of the Institute of Law and Public Policy (ILP) at the
    University of Virginia at Charlottesville, with which Dietz has been
    associated,
    Dr. Dietz is now studying various factions among American gun
    owners, from paranoid subcultures and organized criminal groups to the larger
    numbers of conventional Americans who maintain firearms for personal defense
    and sporting purposes.” Dietz’s thesis is that owners of firearms constitute
    the single most important element of an incipient mass fascist movement'' in
    the United States; thus, their right to bear arms must be greatly restricted.
    One of Dietz's associates at the ILP is Kenneth Lanning, who, as the FBI's
    chief spokesman on occult crimes, maintains that there is no such thing as
    ritual Satanic murder in the U.S. today, and in any case,
    Far more crimes
    have been committed … in the name of God and Jesus than in the name of
    Satan.”

    Registration: It’s Been Done Before

    Given the enormous grassroots base of the NRA, and the great passion which
    that base feels towards its constitutional right to bear arms, the Eastern
    Establishment has apparently been somewhat loath to use the same sort of
    obvious frame-up or judicial murder against the NRA it has employed against
    many other groups. They no doubt reason that they can exploit Purdy-style
    zombies or lone assassins'' like Hinckley to achieve the erosion of the
    Second Amendment, as such incidents will bring a new legislative surge toward
    gun control. And their progress has been dramatic. As Jim Campbell of Wilmer,
    Cutler, and Pickering put it,
    I must say there was a long period of time
    there where I thought nothing would happen in my lifetime…. But in the last
    few years, in a period of time politically when you would think this wouldn’t
    happen, remarkably, it has begun to happen. Quite something.”
    Campbell elaborated on what still needs to be done: We need to get to the
    point where a gun is treated as seriously as a car. You know, you have a motor
    vehicle registration number on cars, and when you transfer, the state knows
    about it. This is not a bad model for guns.... In the more near term, we want
    to ban assault weapons.''
    At present, there is no such universal registration of guns. A record is
    kept of the sale at the local gunshop where it is sold, but that is it. It is
    clear why Campbell has the
    vision” of universal registration. That was
    already put into place once, in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The son of a parent
    who fled Hitler, recently described what his parents had told him: “First of
    all, all the guns were registered, and the government knew exactly who had
    them. Then one day, the Gestapo came around and said, We know you have such
    and such guns at this address. Give them to us.' And if you tried to say,
    No,
    I no longer have them,’ or something like that, they just said, `Okay, you
    come with us’ and you went to jail. The same thing happened in Poland. All the
    guns were registered there, and when the Nazis came in, they simply took the
    registration lists around and collected them all.”
    The same thing happened in the Soviet Union. Registration requirements
    introduced in 1926 paved the way for confiscation of all civilian-owned rifles
    not long after, particularly in Ukraine. Then, Stalin’s police were free to
    starve and butcher 10 million Ukrainians in the 1930s.

    http://www.skepticfiles.org/weird/gunctlar.htm

  91. Dillon Sweeny says

    Un-fucking-believable, you POS!

    LINKS, you goddamn echolalic jackass!!! Don’t you spew your shit at that length, EVAH!! Even if you have to use Facebook.

    A series of summary lines, followed by links, you double-damned browser-trashing fuckwad!

    Ignored. Forever.

  92. Joe Stalin says

    ” just a tip you will never live long enough to see the NRA destroyed”

    NRA – Six Million Strong.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTdO-w3xnpw

  93. Verymuchalive says

    Thanks. Usually, my demographics reading is confined to Mr Sailer and the “most important graph in the world.” Obviously, I need to expand it.
    I still don’t understand why Wikipedia has a Russian Homicide Rate of 10.83 in 2016, whereas your graph has it nearer 5 than 10. No doubt once I read your pieces I will grasp your different methodologies.

  94. Thorfinnsson says

    You are a pathetic weakling and deserve to be shot.

  95. Seamus Padraig says

    BTW, I just tried posting this link to Facebook, and it doesn’t seem to work. Is Fakebook now blocking Unz? Or is it that new anti-DDOS software that Unz is using that’s causing this?

  96. Yes pretty much.

    But Butina started her campaign in 2011, when she was 22.

    And when did she start working for Torshin? First appearing together in 2012, although Torshin becomes interested in guns in 2010, following the murder of Federal Judge Eduard Chuvashov.

    Butina clearly is fanatical about gun rights activism, so probably is starting the activism by herself, which brings her to Moscow, and the relationship begins with Torshin through this in 2012.

    Torshin has a history of lobbying himself for freedom tobacco and alcohol duties. His political philosophy is somehow consistent.

  97. Anonymous says

    Hi Michael. Can we convert you to gunlove by saying that guns are against Trump?

    Trump is asked, Who are you going to believe—the Russians or your own officers? And he refused to choose! Do you support your troops or Putin — and he wouldn’t choose! So my first thought goes out to those who serve this country— I’m so sorry the Commander-in-Chief is a traitor.

    — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) July 16, 2018

  98. What the hell??!! Alcohol is bad – who knew?

    Peace.

  99. Pat Kittle says

    I turned on the radio this morning and heard hysterical jabbering Jews outraged that Trump, without his [Jew] “advisors,” met with Putin for 2 hours.

    THE HORROR!!

    🙂

  100. Felix Keverich says

    She is also allegedly a female entrepreneur, starting her own retailing company immediately after graduating (using a loan from a bank!), building it into a successful business and selling it, all of it in a matter of 2 years, before moving to Moscow.

    The woman’s biography looks very shady, and so I for one would not rule out a possibility that she is a spy, a very incompetent one. Anna Chapman used to be a “businesswoman” too; she worked with Warren Buffet – that’s what she told people.

  101. Felix Keverich says

    It’s not an issue of different methodologies. Wikipedia article relies on outdated data from the UN. I explain in this comment:
    http://www.unz.com/akarlin/mueller-hates-russian-human-rights-activists/#comment-2421107

  102. Exactly the thought that occurred to me when I read the story.

  103. Johnny Rico says

    Does anyone know what the rehab/”recovery” industry is like in Russia? Or if there even is one.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/facility-marijuana-for-addiction-shakeup-2018-7

  104. No clue, but I do know that mixing guns and alcohol is not a good idea and can lead to unintended Darwin Award nominations.

    Peace.

  105. AnonFromTN says

    I hate to be hard on an attractive young chick, but maybe it serves her right?

  106. Johnny Rico says

    Nah. Facebook is a regular FreedomFest. I posted this earlier no problemo. Whether it shows up on anyone’s feed is another story.

    https://amp.businessinsider.com/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg-octopus-congress-protestors-2018-7

  107. Johnny Rico says

    Hahahaaa! You don’t sound creepy at all.

  108. ussr andy says

    nationalism, meant “for export” only.

    like the free press, human rights and market fundamentalism as the ideal, in America.

  109. This part of the story is surely most likely related to her relationship with Torshin.

    He has many different business interests since the 1990s.

    And she probably has to explain to people how she can afford her eccentric lifestyle, and not allowed to say she just gets funded from her “sugar dad”.

    Anna Chapman, by comparison – her group was using steganography, private wifi and short-burst radiograms to encrypt all their communications.

    Torshin and Butina were planning together through sentimental messages on their social media profiles.

  110. Anarcho-Supremacist says

    How has it gone down almost 50 percent in two years? That is dang impressive.

  111. Quartermaster says

    All that is coming. To drain the swamp, things have to be done very carefully so they make sure the big fish don’t walk. There are 40,000 sealed indictments that have yet to be opened. I’ll bet a dollar to a donut, Rosenstein’s name is on one of them, along with a number of people that have been high in the Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama maladminstrations. If you like seeing leftist heads explode, you’re going to love the show.

  112. Corvinus says

    “We have a Deep State that is so invested in its demented campaign against Trump that it is willing to imprison human rights activists and supporters of American values in pursuit of its objectives.”

    No, sir. I’m afraid that this “campaign against Trump” is one that he and his henchmen more than likely created on their own, and the chickens apparently are coming home to roost. Butina has put herself in harm’s way on her own volition.

    Please educate yourself on this important matter.

    https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1019041395175317505

  113. Corvinus says

    “There are 40,000 sealed indictments that have yet to be opened. I’ll bet a dollar to a donut…”

    Keep your money, as Q is nothing more than a charlatan. He had said last October (!) that the indictments would be revealed, then backtracked, and said it will be this upcoming October. Besides, word on the street is that the real Q has been arrested and that a fake Q is actually working with the investigators by continuing with the charade that the real Q began.

  114. The NRA is a seditious organization and it’s going to be great to watch them get destroyed.

    When you run into a violent criminal who wants to beat you down and rape your woman and children, remember to talk him down with nice words.

  115. Anonymous says

    Nothing really surprises me anymore. Anyone who REALLY wants to know whats going on should definitely check this out, its a pretty scary warning from a history and religion professor. Pretty damn eye opening: https://ancientprophecy.weebly.com/

  116. Thorfinnsson says

    Butina acted foolishly, but nothing would have happened to her if Trump didn’t win the election (and ofc the Hillary campaign’s invention of the demented Russiagate conspiracy theory).

    Butina being held without bail is particularly absurd given that a judge can order her to surrender her passport.

    And certainly her behavior is no worse than any of the massive number of open lobbyists for Israel and Saudi Arabia, many of him are actual natural-born US citizens and thus have no excuse.

  117. Whether it was a leak or a hack is a separate question. Even if you could prove it was a leak, that won’t tell you the identity of the leaker(s).

    There may be one primary leaker and accessories after the fact. Craig Murray implied that the person he met (in the woods near A.U.) was an intermediary, not the original leaker.

    Ray and Bill are telling everyone about their analysis of download speeds. Without challenging that, another researcher, Lee Stranahan, says that’s irrelevant because they’re looking at a date that was AFTER the Gucifer2 release. I haven’t followed it closely enough to comment, but Lee was one of the journalists in contact with Gucifer2 prior to the release and he’s spoken about this extensively.

    Lee is mentioned (not by name) in connection with Roger Stone in the Mueller indictment of the 12 Russians. This, and the fact that his research topics [Bill Browder, HRC emails, DNC Pakistani techs] were mentioned in the Helsinki presser, made him a hot topic this weekend. I wish he’d write these things up, but there are links to all of this on his twitter feed.
    https://twitter.com/stranahan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

  118. Daniel Chieh says

    That sounds like a rigid form of judgement.

  119. No one believes that anymore.

  120. RadicalCenter says

    Yeah! Lock up everyone who wants the government to obey the Constitution, the foundational and supreme law of our country. That’s, um, sedition, or something.

  121. RadicalCenter says

    The firings could get him killed or lead to drastically stepped-up efforts to impeach him. But he probably should announce the firings anyway. His administration, and more importantly our nation, are almost lost, and there is often little sense in being deterred by risks and threats that already exist and are growing in any event.

  122. RadicalCenter says

    We’ll see about oh-so-superior Europe’s incarceration rates going forward, as they are brilliantly importing their very own dangerous African (and Arab, Turkish, etc.) underclass.

    It was easy for Europe to have lower incarceration rates when they were all European. Now they’re starting to find out what it’s like to try to live among volatile, impulsive, angry savages who’ve been taught to hate us and blame everyone else for their staggering dysfunction, literal idiocy, and failure — as we’ve been doing for a long time.

  123. There’s nothing surprising about that.

    The homicide spike during the transition period was artificial, and so it is now going down fast, now that said period is over.

    The Ukraine and Belorussia both fell from 10/100k to 5/100k during the 2000s. Poland reached 5/100k by the late 1990s, but was at 1.3 by 2009 and 0.75 in 2013 (one of the safest countries in the world).

    The late Russian Empire’s homicide rate was 5/100k, similar to Italy’s at the time (though higher than the 1-2/100k rate seen in England, Germany, and France). But Italy has long converged to the rest of Western Europe. So I expect Russia to continue going down until it converges to around 1.5/100k.

  124. RadicalCenter says

    We didn’t have prayer breakfasts when I was growing up, because we were Catholic. But what’s wrong with some camaraderie with neighbors and gratitude to God along with a meal?

  125. Anarcho-Supremacist says

    That is still very impressive for a population that large. It looks like according to those graphs you posted those metrics have been better then the 1990 SU sense 2008(The high rate is the Soviet Union debunks the myth that totalitarian regimes have low crime rates btw) so arguably the transition period ended in 2008-9.

  126. Joe Stalin says

    “It was the Soviets who began confiscating private weaponry from 1918.”

    And for the British, it was the fear of communists that led to the start of the UK on the road to Gun Control.

    “There are several possible causes for the Firearms Act of 1920, all of which are plausible explanations:
    concern about criminal misuse of firearms; gun−running to Ireland; increased political violence in the
    pre−World War I period. Yet examination of the Cabinet papers declassified in 1970, and Cabinet Secretary
    Thomas Jones’ diaries, shows that all of these other concerns were insignificant compared to the fear of
    Bolshevik revolution.”

    “If the Firearms Act of 1920 had licensed only handguns, Shortt’s claims before the Commons would be at
    least superficially plausible. If the Firearms Act of 1920 had included all firearms, it might be argued that it
    been drafted in an overly broad manner in an attempt to disarm criminals. But the inclusion of rifles (but not
    shotguns) in this licensing measure suggest that the fear expressed throughout more than two years of Cabinet
    discussions and reports drove this bill: Bolshevik revolution. In a revolutionary struggle against soldiers, a
    shotgun’s value is limited because its range is limited. Soldiers armed with rifles can engage a insurgent force
    armed with shotguns at a distance of 100 to 150 yards with no fear of serious injury, even if the insurgents
    outnumber the soldiers by a significant margin. Soldiers confronting revolutionaries with rifles, however,
    would be at serious risk of injury or death, depending on the number or marksmanship of the revolutionaries.”

    http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/clayton_1.pdf

  127. annamaria says

    is this how you generally talk about your female relatives?

  128. annamaria says

    It has the sense to ask Corvinus and Seth Abramson, whether Ms. Butina would have this kind of exposure by MSM if she were an Israeli.
    Here is a sample: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rights-groups-demand-israel-stop-arming-neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-1.6248727 “Rights Groups Demand Israel Stop Arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine.”
    American citizens died in a fight against Nazism. Have you both, Corvinus and Abramson, heard about that?
    Whereas the Israeli right groups exposed Bibi and his pro-neo-Nazi government, MSM has been mute like a fish about the arming of neo-Nazi by Israelis, with the Israel-made advanced weaponry. Guess, it would be antisemitic to mention the fact of Israeli government arming neo-Nazis: http://tapnewswire.com/2015/10/six-jewish-companies-control-96-of-the-worlds-media/

  129. Dannyboy says

    ((((Seth Abramson)))) warning Americans about “agents of a foreign government”…LOL

    I love it.

  130. annamaria says

    On a related topic: “China hacked Clinton’s e-mail” http://www.turcopolier.typepad.com
    “Looks like a hacking operation by China. They nailed Clinton’s completely unprotected system and then inserted code that gave them all her traffic over e-mail subsequent to that. That included all her State Department classified traffic which she had her staff illegally scan and insert in her private e-mail. We are talking about 30,000+ messages. Strzok was told that by the Intelligence Community Inspector General WHILE he was running the Clinton e-mail investigation and chose to ignore it.”
    — A stunning combination of incompetence, opportunism, and treason. And don’t forget the Awan affair when a family of Pakistanis had been collecting classified information on congressional computers for years. The “collectors” did not have security clearance.
    Considering how much money the US taxpayers have been paying for “defense” – $ 1.2 trillion — the CIA and FBI bosses look like conmen.

  131. What’s so special about Finnish knives? An image search reveals a bewildering amount of different designs. Or is it like “assault weapon!” – just a scaremongering bugaboo?

  132. https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1019402880971767809

    There must come a point where their actions catch up with their unhinged rhetoric.

  133. Sorry not sorry, but I gotta’ say it: she’s totally hot looking!

    Let the poor girl go. Then send her over to my house. Please!

    Just a (frenzied with lust) thought.

    VicB3

    P.S. Found a photo that looks an awful lot like her. Here it is:

    http://old.themoscowtimes.com/upload/iblock/bfa/Yermolov-Cadets-School-2.jpg

    P.P.S. This is a completely bullshit indictment. There are some real criminal politicians who ought to be hauled in – Hillary and Bill for example – but they get a pass.

    This government truly is corrupt to the core.

  134. What about when the sky falls, what should he do then?

  135. Bragadocious says

    Well, if she is a spy, she arrived here on Obama’s watch. She would also be guilty of immigration fraud. Maybe Democrats will now take an interest in our borders, but I doubt it. Too much at stake for them, and if they can conduct an occasional show trial for a Russian conservative, they can appear to be doing their jobs.

  136. BostonTea says

    “I have been writing about Russian demographics in general, including in the murder”

    A true homicide rate for Russia is much higher, reaching 28 per 100k/people.

    SOURCE: Alexandra Lysova & Nikolay Shchitov, “What is Russia’s Real Homicide Rate?” (2015, Theoretical Criminology)

    In criminology and medicine there is also such a thing as the EUI category (EUI = Event of Undetermined Intent) which is used mainly for hiding murder. In Russia the redistribution of EUIs does result in a substantial elevation of the official mortality figures for homicide. After the adjustment, the Russian age standardized homicide rate is above 20.0 per 100k/people (double the officially recorded value).

    SOURCE: Andreev et al, “A Method for Reclassifying Cause of Death in Cases Categorized as Event of Undetermined Intent” (2015, Population Health Metrics)

  137. BostonTea says

    “Poland reached 5/100k by the late 1990s”

    Homicides in Poland never reached 5/100k. The highest rate was 2.7 in 2001. What you have to know is that the Poland cases include attempted murders, in which a perpetrator made a physical assault on a victim with intent to kill, but did not succeed in doing so. Such attempted murders constitute about 30% of all the archived homicides, a proportion that remained fairly constant throughout the years 1990-2014.

    orange line – attempts + homicides actually committed
    blue line – only homicides committed

    https://goo.gl/hChuv5

  138. Build a bunker. What? You don’t have one of those?

  139. Felix Keverich says

    None of my female relatives are like this, and as a Russian, I’m sick of hearing about Russian WHORES getting in trouble abroad because of their stupidity. I think we need to introduce exit visas for women under 35, I’m serious.

  140. Felix Keverich says

    Step 1: Google “What is Russia’s Real Homicide Rate?

    Step 2: click a link http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362480614568743

    Step 3: read an abstract

    On the other hand, other conditions and processes (e.g. rampant corruption, predatory policing, political repressions, state violence against businesses, rising xenophobia and apathy) point to what Norbert Elias terms a ‘decivilizing process’, which is expected to be associated with a less precipitous decline in homicide or stable homicide rate in this period. In fact, newly available homicide estimates suggest that the homicide rate was higher than and did not decline at a pace suggested by the official police and mortality sources in the 2000s.

    wtf is this crap? Look, you can choose to believe whatever anti-Russian conspiracy theory you’ll find on the internet, but I see no reason to disbelieve Rosstat.

  141. BostonTea says

    I read the paper. You also should read it instead of quoting the abstract. Here’s a full version of it: https://goo.gl/W7GZeM

    There are many grey areas in the production of police statistics of homicides, which allegedly open up the opportunity for manipulation.

    In Russia if the person died not during an attack but later (e.g. in three days, in hospital), the event would be registered as intentional grievous bodily harm leading to death and would not be included in the homicide category. In the USA any death caused by the injuries at any time after the offense is classified as murder.

    Also, only cases with the intent to kill, not to inflict injuries which might still lead to death, would be counted as homicide according to the Criminal Code definition; all other cases would be coded as intentional grievous bodily harm leading to death. Criminologists argue that about 1/3 of the latter are cases of intentional homicide.

    Another aspect that should be kept in mind while interpreting police homicide data in Russia is that it is an event-based rather than victim-based reporting system. In other words, homicide of tens or hundreds of people resulting from a bomb explosion would be recoded as one crime.

  142. Felix Keverich says

    You seem to know stuff about Poland…Are you from Poland by any chance? That would explain the anti-Russian bullshit. 🙂

    I read the paper. You also should read it instead of quoting the abstract.

    I don’t want to waste any more of my time on this nonsense. It is obvious that the authors have an agenda: they could not accept that a country with “political repressions” and “rising xenophobia” has a declining crimerate, so they are trying to make a case that crime didn’t actually fall. This is silly conspiratorial nonsense, and you should be embarrassed for bringing it into this thread.

  143. reiner Tor says

    However, the Russian mortality rate (from all causes) also dropped drastically. If they started to play with the classification recently, then that’s an even more impressive improvement. But if it’s always been like that (likely), then it’s just simply a case of a drastic improvement, but from a much higher base.

  144. Mitleser says

    In the USA any death caused by the injuries at any time after the offense is classified as murder.

    Why do Americans like murder so much?

  145. Anonymous lurker says

    Ridiculous, really. Some late-20’s Americanophile gun nerd chick who’s unsuccessfully lobbied for increased Russian gun rights against Putler’s regime for years and years, while getting her blogs shut down by Roskomnadzor and crap (the only proper success her lobby group’s had seems to be that they managed to dissuade a court from handing a Russian woman some ridiculous prison sentence for accidentally stabbing an assailing rapist to death)

    Seems like she got tired of Putler’s oppressive regime and eventually settled down in the U.S. of A instead, so that she could be able to carry a .38 as should be everybody’s right.

    Butina also testified that she has a romantic relationship with this Torshin, which explains the tone in their private Twitter DMs. DMs that the U.S. IC apparently snoops on with impunity, which while unsurprising is frankly a bigger story than this highly amateurish, entirely transparent gun rights advocacy crap.

    Her social media presence is great in general though, as everything is laid out in the open with absolutely no attempts anywhere to hide anything about her shenanigans in Russia or the U.S. (and Torshin appears in smiling selfies and stuff here and there too, for that matter, which I assume is MO when you’re a shady spy handler – having your people tell everyone).

    P.S. Western darling Navalny endorsed Butina for the 2014 elections.

  146. BostonTea says

    “This is silly conspiratorial nonsense, and you should be embarrassed for bringing it into this thread.”

    These are statistical facts. If you’d actually read the paper, you would’ve never said such a bs. I won’t even mention that you completely ignored the second article by Andreev et al.

    Russian criminologists have been skeptical about the remarkable decline in the police-recorded homicide rate since at least 2000 and considered it to be an artificial tampering with the statistical data. A group of scholars from the Research Institute of the Academy of General Prosecutor’s Office headed by Prof. Sergei Inshakov conducted a comprehensive study to calculate more accurate homicide estimates from 2001 to 2011, including the dark figure number of homicides left out of the official police data.

    Having direct access to the first-hand unmodified police statistics, Inshakov discovered that the total number of homicides reported to the police increasingly exceeded the number of homicides officially registered by police. Specifically, the number of reports about homicide has tripled from about 14,000 to 45,000 whereas a recorded total homicide by the police almost halved from 34,000 to 18,000. As a result, in 2011 police registered 2.5x fewer homicides than were reported to the police.

  147. Mitleser says

    Who reported them to the police?

  148. I am no criminologist or anything, but in Sweden, only about 1/4 of all reported murders actually turn out to be such once the investigations have gone on for a little while. E.g. in 2017 there were 439 deaths in Sweden that were reported as and subsequently investigated as murders, but only 113 (~26%) were confirmed to be murders (of any degree) in the end. Seems iffy to treat the initial numbers as anything certain.

  149. “It has the sense to ask Corvinus and Seth Abramson, whether Ms. Butina would have this kind of exposure by MSM if she were an Israeli.”

    You are offering a red herring. Focus on what she has potentially done here.

  150. Thorfinnsson says

    It’s just the blacks, who are responsible for half of all murders.

    https://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/

    American whites are not much more murderous than Western Europeans (despite easy access to massive firepower) and less murderous than Eastern Europeans. See this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicide_rate

    Note the low homicide rates in New England, Minnesota, the Dakotas, etc.

    Hispanics outside of those in gangs aren’t particularly murderous either, though they do seem to cause an awful lot of drinking-and-driving fatalities.

    And obviously it goes without saying that our Asians have a very low rate of murder.

  151. HOW BILL BROWDER USES THE MEDIA – & INFLUENCES THE PUBLIC

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mJ42Vl521g
    BILL BROWDER: Super Deep Dive on Browdergate, NERDS ONLY

  152. AnonFromTN says

    Looks like I wasn’t clear enough, so people misunderstood me. As far as the meaning of this arrest for the US is concerned, is simply shows that Deep State is clutching at straws. As it should: its narrative is so false that they can’t afford a word of truth (look at MSM), but have to simulate activity. This arrest is typical “displacement activity” (this is a term in ethology, the science of animal behavior, Google it).

    I was commenting about its meaning for Russia. Many Russians still harbor illusions about the US. Looks like this silly girl is one of them. Nothing beats personal experience. It would be good for her to get the taste of “freedom” in the “shining city on the hill” first-hand.

  153. “in Sweden only about 1/4 of all reported murders actually turn out to be such”

    Source please.

  154. “It’s just blacks, who are responsible for half of all murders.”

    Please check out this paper: Steffensmeier et al., “Reassessing Trends in Black Violent Crime, 1980-2008”

    After creating estimates of “clean” white arrest counts that do not include Hispanics, Steffensmeier et al. discovered that between 1980-2008 the black share of violent crime was enlarged from 51% to 64% for homicide category and from 59% to 70% for robbery.

    As far as ratios are concerned, the average black-white ratio for homicide was 7:1 using official FBI’s figures and jumped to almost 12:1 after adjusting (after separating Hispanics from non-Hispanic whites). Same for robbery: ratio jumped from 10:1 to 15:1.

  155. The official Swedish authority “Brottsförebyggande rådet” (Council for Crime Prevention) publication “Konstaterade fall av dödligt våld 2017” (2018)

    …which contains the numbers I cited (113 confirmed murders in 2017, out of an initial batch of 439 reported ditto, the rest of the deaths were eventually dismissed as having other causes)

  156. Daniel Chieh says

    Increased the number of “hot girl with gun” pics by some amount?

  157. Daniel Chieh says

    Can you share this w/ translation or send a link?

  158. Daniel Chieh says

    I was just making a double-entendre but I generally agree with your comment.

  159. Here is a PDF of it:
    https://www.bra.se/download/18.10aae67f160e3eba62938176/1522248310076/Sammanfattning_D%C3%B6dligtv%C3%A5ld_2017.pdf

    I could translate it all but it’d be a pain in the arse. I bet you can find the statistics being referenced on Swedish news media websites though, and your machine translator of choice usually does a good job with those.

    I should clarify that out of the roughly 3/4s of reported murders that were dismissed, some obviously could have been murders anyway, but the evidence wasn’t enough to proceed.

    It has to be said that over the years I’ve heard of several cases where the available evidence definitely seemed to suggest murder, but the cases were dismissed by Swedish police as accidents or whatever anyway. One of these cases that springs to mind was the death of 25-year old Robin Nilsson in 2016. He was found seemingly drowned in a less-than-a-foot deep puddle in a forest a significant distance from where he was staying, nobody around him had any idea why he’d go for a forest walk in the middle of the night wearing only socks, he wasn’t a drug user (and the autopsy showed no substances of the sort present, though it did show blunt force trauma here and there) and so on and so forth. All circumstances literally screamed “foul play”, yet police dismissed it as an accident and closed the case shortly after initiating it.

    But such occasionally bizarre things aside, I’m confident that the statistics I cited remain rather close to the true relationships, as Swedish criminal investigators are generally highly competent and our statistics tend to be reliable. What “BRÅ” receives most flak about these days is that they aren’t keen on revealing the ethnicities of victims and perpetrators, even though they do have “insider” access to this data.

  160. Putin meets Trump….

    ….and immediately Deep State throw in their own trump card, the finally found “real russian spy” Maria Butina.
    It is not anymore Muller’s 13, the guys imaginary friends, it is something with the flesh!

    EXCEPT that miss BUTINA seems to be a quisling, an American “spy” in Russia, that very “5th column”, “antlantic integrationist” ad so forth.

    Read my brief comments at https://plus.google.com/+ChristineFelixon/posts/DEjDQuq1tgS

    I am not really informed here, i heard that name for the first time two days ago.

    But if i guessed right, if now Deep State starts burning their own witches, their own agents and spies just to make a plausible public show.

    Desperation and resources scarcity?

  161. Well, this blogger/Texan economic professor claims that Trump is being set up by the Russians and the Democrats and American mass media are completely going along with the setup:

    https://streetwiseprofessor.com/putins-very-useful-idiots/

  162. Daniel Chieh says

    Thank you, sir. I will check it later.

  163. “I think what Vladimir Putin was thinking is the best way to soil our Democratic processes, link the Trump campaign in some conspiratorial way, because it’s Russia, back to the Kremlin.”

    MUH DEMOCRACY

    Just another American who is in denial and blames his problems on another country.

  164. I do not claim that that guy is necessarily right, but internal problems and external actors taking advantage of those internal problems is not mutually exclusive. A dog can have both fleas and ticks.

  165. Hyperborean says

    That may be right, but he should elaborate on why exactly he thinks Russia would want to do so.

    Otherwise he risks sounding like a sophisticated version of those deranged persons on Reddit and Twitter who go, ‘Russia defiled our pure and innocent Democracy-chan!’.

  166. That may be right, but he should elaborate on why exactly he thinks Russia would want to do so.

    To make Trump weak and to demoralize the enemy. Why wouldn’t they do it?

  167. Felix Keverich says

    Looks I was right all along: she is a whore. At least US government officially accused her of being a whore.

    https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1019604162445651970

  168. Hyperborean says

    Because of the risk that when the pendulum swings to the Democrats again, they will be seriously aiming for Russia now that they have far stronger anti-Russian sentiments.

  169. Mitleser says

    Because he prefers a normalization of relations and Trump is not the enemy.

  170. Russian criminologists have been skeptical about the remarkable decline in the police-recorded homicide rate since at least 2000 and considered it to be an artificial tampering with the statistical data. A group of scholars from the Research Institute of the Academy of General Prosecutor’s Office headed by Prof. Sergei Inshakov conducted a comprehensive study to calculate more accurate homicide estimates from 2001 to 2011……Specifically, the number of reports about homicide has tripled from about 14,000 to 45,000

    There’s a simple argument against this idiotic conspiracy theory.

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cpj-journalists-killed-in-russia-1992-to-2015.png

  171. How do you know what he prefers and how do you know Trump is not the enemy? Maybe the latter is wishful thinking?

    Lots of Ukrainian nationalists in the USA have been strong Trump supporters. One whom I know personally had worked in military intelligence. Trump’s son visited a Ukrainian cultural center in Detroit. Trump’s policies have been harder on Russia than were those of Obama.

    A plausible (I don’t claim to be certain about such things) scenario is that interventions were made in favor of Trump in order to weaken the likely president, Clinton, and to discredit and destabilize the Trump administration. Getting this girl to suck the NRA into the vortex is icing on the cake.

  172. In which case society will be even more seriously divided.

  173. Mitleser says

    How do you know what he prefers and how do you know Trump is not the enemy? Maybe the latter is wishful thinking?

    His statements.
    Unless you have something credible that suggest that he did not mean that, it is your wishful thinking.

    Trump’s policies have been harder on Russia than were those of Obama.

    America’s current policies have been harder on Russia than were those of the Obama’s era.
    But that has little to do with Trump or Obama for whom Russia does mean little.
    It is pushed by other people.

  174. AnonFromTN says

    She may or may not be a whore, I wouldn’t trust FBI in anything. They are good at insinuations, inventing all sorts of things, but really bad when confronted with real criminals, like Tsarnayev brothers who did the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. Late Tony Hillerman in his novels wrote that Navajo police says that FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Ineptitude. They have a point.

  175. How do you know what he prefers and how do you know Trump is not the enemy? Maybe the latter is wishful thinking?

    His statements.

    Actions speak louder than (diplomatic) words. Obama was constantly refusing to arm Ukraine. Trump did so. Trump expanded sanctions and expelled large numbers of diplomats. Etc.

    Hillary, meanwhile, was more heavily compromised by the Russians than was Trump.

    A Ukrainian nationalist source:

    http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/whos-truly-beholden-to-the-kremlin/

    Let’s cut through the hysteria and examine the facts.

    Long before Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump exchanged compliments, Bill Clinton received a phone call from Mr. Putin in 2010 thanking him personally for delivering a speech for $500,000, paid by a Russian investment bank that was promoting shares in a company that controlled 20 percent of America’s supply of uranium, a critical component in nuclear weapons.

    The State Department, led by Hillary Clinton, signed off on the deal just two months after her husband’s speech, enabling the Russian state nuclear agency to not only acquire 20 percent of America’s uranium but also own the land in which the deposits are located.

    She was also secretary of state when $145 million in donations reached the Clinton Foundation from the shareholders of the company that sold America’s uranium.

    Yet that wasn’t the only money the Clintons raised from the Russians that resulted in the exchange for sensitive materials.

    Out of 28 American, European and Russian companies that participated in the transfer of classified technology to the Skolkovo technology park outside of Moscow, 17 were Clinton Foundation donors or paid for speeches by Mr. Clinton.

    By 2014, when Russia was invading Ukraine, the FBI issued “an extraordinary warning” to several technology companies involved with Skolkovo. The true motives of the Russians is to gain access to classified, sensitive and emerging technology from the companies, an FBI agent warned.

    John Podesta, the chairman of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, sat on the executive board, alongside key Russian officials, of an energy company that received the FBI’s warning. That didn’t stop him from accepting $35 million from a Putin-connected government fund.

    E-mails released by Wikileaks showed that Mr. Podesta continued to be involved in the company in 2015, even after the Russian invasion and after claiming to be divested. Furthermore, Mr. Podesta is reported to have received $5.25 million for his think tank, Center for American Progress, through a secretive chain of entities that could lead to Russian oligarchs, among them Ruben Vardanyan, who sat on the energy company board, according to the Government Accountability Institute.

    Hillary Clinton supporters erupted in outrage when Mr. Trump hired Paul Manafort to help run his campaign. (Is it not a positive signal that Mr. Trump dumped him after such criticism?) But their silence was deafening when it was revealed in late August that Mr. Manafort hired the Podesta Group to lobby on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych’s allies in the Party of Regions.

    The Podesta Group lobbied until 2014 to downplay the need for a congressional resolution to pressure Mr. Yanukovych to release Yulia Tymoshenko from prison, the Associated Press reported. Moreover, it failed to file the proper paperwork, making the lobbying illegal.

    Clinton supporters also drummed up hysteria about Mr. Trump being too busy to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

    Yet that pales in comparison to the very same Mr. Podesta – having already taken millions as part of sensitive technology transfers – reacting with disinterest (as revealed by Wikileaks) to Victor Pinchuk’s pleas to get Mr. Clinton and a group of Western leaders to voice support for Ukraine as the Russian military aggression peaked in the winter of 2015.

    Now the FBI has confirmed this week that its investigations of Mr. Trump, launched in the summer, have uncovered no ties to the Kremlin. Nothing. Nichoho. Zero.

    Voters should consider that the Clintons and Mr. Podesta have far more questionable ties to the Kremlin, possibly criminal, than Mr. Trump and his entourage.

    ::::::::::::

    I am personally, not sure.

    The nature of such activities is that we outside the loop are probably unaware of what is really happening. Trump’s persecutors, not Trump, may be Russia’s actual unwitting assetts.

  176. Mitleser says

    Actions speak louder than (diplomatic) words. Obama was constantly refusing to arm Ukraine. Trump did so.

    Trump wants to sell American arms.
    https://twitter.com/thespandrell/status/1019225153543143426

    Trump expanded sanctions and expelled large numbers of diplomats. Etc.

    America expanded sanctions and expelled a large number of diplomats.
    Or did you forget how almost the whole Senat voted for more sanctions?

    Out of 28 American, European and Russian companies that participated in the transfer of classified technology to the Skolkovo technology park outside of Moscow, 17 were Clinton Foundation donors or paid for speeches by Mr. Clinton.

    Skolkovo was Medvedev’s project.
    Would explain why Dems dislike Putin for not letting Medvedev stay for another term.

  177. AnonFromTN says

    Arguably, Skolkovo was among the most anti-Russian projects ever approved by the Russian government after Yeltsin. It was largely a money-laundering outfit. If one assumes that those who organized Skolkovo sincerely wanted to advance Russian science, then Skolkovo was among the dumbest projects on record: only a totally clueless bureaucrat can believe that you can create the summit without the mountain. Naturally, as the facilitator of science in Russia Skolkovo failed miserably. It enriched quite a few people, though.

  178. Mitleser says

    President Butina?

    Speaking about Maria Butina, she was viewed as sort of pro-US here in Russia (as she, as most of other gun legalizes here, used USA as positive example – and not only when speaking about gun laws). It was limiting her audience to “pro-gun” circles. Now, when she is facing problems with US legal system, and when her face is every day on main Russian channels, she got much wider political horizon to go. Taking into account she is young, active, educated (graduated politoloigy course in university with excellent degree) – may be in 25-30 years she will be President of Russia. Gun legalization is very popular topic here- even pro-Russians in Donetsk republic have established free ownership of any registered gun, up to 11.43mm caliber, “like in America”, not relatively strict regulations like in Russia.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blEiQHy3_gw
    http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=40535&page=153#entry1378208

  179. So I am somewhat familiar with Craig Pirrong’s work (and as I recall, so are you).

    Before 2016, his views were basically that of the Western Russophobe, whom you have criticized yourself (though in fairness to him he was far more informed on Russia than the average Western Russophobe).

    However, he was also a Russophobe of the “Red Empire“, not of neoliberalism.txt; “boot in your ass” American nationalism, with Confederate sympathies, hardcore 2nd Amendmentism, some Germanophobia and Sinophobia and Islamophobia, even a preoccupation with the glories of Henry Jackson (not that there’s anything wrong with any of that). In other words, he was a Trumpist before Trumpism.

    As you can understand, the contradiction between these two issues… must have become somewhat of an issue around 2016. For what I can tell, this is his resolution of these contradictions, his “synthesis”, so to speak:

    (1) Putin isn’t all that bad. China is the main enemy. Trump is hard on Russia, anyway.

    (2) Dems r teh real racists Putin puppets, anyway.

    My impression is that his views have always been highly ideological, and buying into these conspiracy theories about Uranium One and so forth (which even I as a Trump supporter consider to be BS, if useful as propaganda devices) is an extension of that.

    I would also assess that you yourself subscribe to ideological thinking on this issue (which is perfectly fine; I am sure, objectively speaking, that I do the same on, say, the Ukraine). For instance, the bizarre idea that it is the Russians/Dems coordinating against Trump is just a classical example of the many other 666D chess/mnogokhodovka theories about both Trump and Putin, just their inverse variant.

    In reality, I am 99% sure that things are more or less what they appear to be. Trump has a fundamentally businessman’s (as opposed to democratist religious ideologue’s) approach to international relations, with some minor Russophile sentiments. His ability to act on the latter is effectively constrained by the Deep State. Even so, he has clearly been a net benefit to Russia by souring American relations with other world powers (though he didn’t do it FOR Russia, of course),whereas those actions aimed against Russians – the sanctions and Ukraine weapons supplies – were clearly imposed against his will. Actually, I half-suspect even the Russophile sentiments are more familial/nepotistic than ideological, in that they stem from Melania (just as his far more explicitly Israel friendly policies stem from Javanka).

    PS. The reason Ukrainians, and Russians, and and pretty much everyone outside the WEIRDo countries – with the understandable exception of Mexicans and Iranians – are sort of ok with Trump is that they are not WEIRD. They are not triggered by him on a fundamental level like Swedish or New England GoodWhites. Consequently, they will continue to like him and creatively interpret (invent 666D chess apologetics for) his actions, at least until the gap between said actions and reality becomes too big. I acknowledge that as someone with non-WEIRD genetics, it’s possible I may have succumbed to the same thing. I suppose we’ll learn who’s more deluded eventually.

  180. Would explain why Dems dislike Putin for not letting Medvedev stay for another term.

    With all its scandals, it still continued as planned, and surely with a lot of potential as there is no choice not to invest in this area.

    Problem, is that like a lot of things, the government cannot just do it in a normal way, especially with these public-private partnerships – instead it seems to turn into some kind of corruption factory for people to help their friends.

    For example, it’s a project for investing future industries. And yet the majority of its budget has ended in construction (how does this make sense?).

    Putin claims it was originally supposed to be a business school, and then later became some idea for an innovation center.* (Does this sound like a competent planning process? )

    *

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHOIj6iaOAU

  181. One of the rare times when I agree with you.

  182. Gun legalization is very popular topic here- even pro-Russians in Donetsk republic have established free ownership of any registered gun, up to 11.43mm caliber, “like in America”, not relatively strict regulations like in Russia.

    In 2015, Right Sector were bitterly whining about the fact that the “sovok” DNR is much more based on guns than the Ukraine.

    https://i.imgur.com/hsJUCtH.png

  183. Lincoln Blockface Squarebeard III says

    US Arrests Russia’s Foremost 2nd Amendment Activist

    This is very ambiguous and clumsy wording. Initially I thought it might be referring to a Russian national taking part in pro-2nd Amendment activities in the United States. Just how many activists defending another country’s constitution does Russia have for there to be a “foremost” among them? It just dosn’t make sense. OTOH a 2nd Amendment activist in Russia does not make much sense either. Then it dawned on me…perhaps 2nd Amendment here is not meant literally. By jove, I was right!

    For the sake of clarity and accuracy (not all of us are cutting edge high IQ geniuses) something like “US Arrests Russia’s Foremost Right To Bear Arms Activist” would be a much better fit.

    Out of curiosity, are Russians greatly concerned with gaining a right to own and carry personal firearms? If so, more power to them. However, I get the impression it is more a fringe issue popular with high income Muricaphiles than a goal ordinary Russians spend a lot of time and energy pursuing.

  184. And yet the majority of its budget has ended in construction (how does this make sense?).

    Likewise, the Innopolis project outside Kazan (which was built from the federal budget).

    They claim to be investing in science and education, but watching reports from there it seem so much money spent on construction, including fucking useless things like these underground passages so pedestrians can cross carless streets.

    Showing the underground crossings about 5:20 onwards.

    https://youtu.be/6OSEAFvJ4P4?t=5m20s

  185. Mitleser says
  186. AnonFromTN says

    Good to hear. I work in research my whole life, so from my perspective the effect (or, rather, lack thereof) of Skolkovo on Russian science was 100% predictable. Russia, just like the US, can ensure a decent future for the country only through cutting-edge science and technology. So, unless Russian government heavily invests in real science, rather than in bubbles and baubles like Skolkovo or Rosnano, I will not believe that its policy is driven by a sincere desire to make the country great.

    Putin and his circle might wholeheartedly engage in competition with the US and promote multi-polar word simply to make Russian moneyed elites (who are just as despicable as the US moneyed elites) equals with their US counterparts, rather than pathetic second-rate poodles like the elites of countries subservient to the US. The same motive could be the driver of the policy of Xi and Chinese elites supporting him. However, China started actively investing in science and wooing scientists (including non-Chinese) several years ago, so I will give Xi the benefit of the doubt. Still hoping that Putin will also earn one. Hope springs eternal.

  187. Butina is not an Atlantic integrationist or 6th columnist or whatever other retarded meme from faggot Dugin.

    She is a semi-nationalist Putin supporter who likes guns.

  188. Mitleser says

    What do you think of Zelenograd and Akademgorodok?

  189. Daniel Chieh says

    This is quality trolling.

  190. AnonFromTN says

    Those two, as well as Pushchino near Moscow, were Soviet projects. There were no special programs for them. As far as I can tell (I worked in Pushchino for about 7 years), these were mostly meant to get the scientists, who were considered inclined to disloyalty by the Communist Party, away from big cities. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak.

    Soviet Party bosses knew deep down that the country needs strong science, but did not have the first idea how science works. That’s why excellent (and free) scientific education we got in the best USSR universities turned out to be most useful in the US science.

  191. Yes these were successful Soviet projects, and there wasn’t the same economi motivation as now to spend all the budget on construction contracts.

    Also you could send a lot more people to live there.

    Would you like to be a student at University of Innopolis?

    Low ratio of girls, and the city has nothing to do there.

    Maybe the silence and quiet would have the bonus that you would stay in your room all day and concentrate on your studies (and hopefully not playing video games).

    Also the entire city runs on Telegram messenger, which makes recent events inconvenient.

  192. Hyperborean says

    Maybe the silence and quiet would have the bonus that you would stay in your room all day and concentrate on your studies (and hopefully not playing video games).

    Optimism is wonderful.

  193. AnonFromTN says

    Fiztech at Dolgoprudniy (for non-Russians, the place near Moscow that gave the best education in Physics in the USSR, now in Russia, and likely in the world, considering how well its graduates are doing in Physics PhD programs at all top US universities) also had low percentage of girls. The result was that its students chased tail in many Moscow Institutes and Universities that had high proportion of females. There was no Internet and no video games at the time, though.

  194. annamaria says

    Meanwhile, the criminal Geoffrey Pyatt, of Majdan fame, has been plotting in Greece: http://theduran.com/the-man-behind-ukraine-coup-is-now-turning-greece-against-russia-video/
    About two years ago, “Geoffrey Pyatt assumed office as US Ambassador to Greece. Before the assignment he had served as ambassador to Ukraine in 2013-2016 at the time of Euromaidan – the events the US took an active part in. He almost openly contributed into the Russia-Ukraine rift. Now it’s the turn of Greece. The ambassador has already warned Athens about the “malign influence of Russia”. He remains true to himself.”

    This Geoffrey Pyatt: “America’s Jewish ambassador to Ukraine lauds neo-Nazi Ukrainian party” — http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/12289 https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Geoffrey_Pyatt

    This scoundrel had been caught on the successful regime change and the overthrow of the legitimate president of Ukraine. Pyatt’ illegal activities have resulted in the ongoing civil war (at least 10.000 deaths) and economic destruction of Ukraine. And yet, Pyatt the Psychopaths opens his mouth to accuse others of his own crimes: “Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call:” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

  195. annamaria says

    “…what she has potentially done here.”
    — USS Liberty?
    — Pollard?
    — $38 billion theft from the US taxpayers?
    — Ownership of MSM in the US?
    — Creating a story of aluminum tubes and yellow cake? (Ledeen)
    — Making the US citizens pledge never-ever to be critical of Israel, otherwise, no government help will be provided in case of a natural disaster? (Dickinson, TX)
    — Protecting Awan family of fraudsters and thieves from investigation? (Wasserman-Schultz)
    — Not allowing the FBI to look at the “hacked” computers? (Alperovitch)
    — Stalling the investigation of Seth Rich murder? (Wasserman) …

  196. ll. Actually, I half-suspect even the Russophile sentiments are more familial/nepotistic than ideological, in that they stem from his Melania (just as his far more explicitly Israel friendly policies stem from Javanka).

    With Trump it’s the causal process is the other way around. His daughter Ivanka Trump was born in 1981.

    Trump was financing building settlements in Israel since the end of the 1970s decade. His name is written on signs in town squares in some settlements in Israel from the early 1980s.*

    He has strong views and countries he likes and doesn’t. Guys at this age does not change their underlying views or prejudices. At that age they just have their own irrational momentum.

    His attitude to Russia I cannot find strong evidence about – probably he is opposed to Russophobia, but otherwise there does not seem any evidence of connection.

    It’s lack of evidence of any connection which is why the story is so ridiculous.

    • Donors financing building neighbourhoods in Dekel in 1982 to home settlers expelled from the Sinai.

    https://images1.ynet.co.il/PicServer4/2016/11/14/7385490/8578115_8579126_rumble.jpg

  197. Thorfinnsson says

    Actually, I half-suspect even the Russophile sentiments are more familial/nepotistic than ideological, in that they stem from his Melania (just as his far more explicitly Israel friendly policies stem from Javanka).

    Slovenes are Medslav Papists. How Russia-friendly can they be?

    I think he simply admires Putin as an alpha male, and he fails to see what profit there is in antagonizing Russia. Trump also seems to admire Duterte, MbS, Xi, Kim, Bibi, and other macho bad boys. He’s been to Moscow a few times and likely sees it as not too different from New York or London–an oligarchic playground where there’s money to be made in hospitality.

    He also seems to have considered the Cold War itself a “bad deal” while it was ongoing. As early as 1985 he suggested the USA and USSR should align their foreign policies to inhibit nuclear proliferation (specifically singling out France as a proliferator, which I think was true of Mitterand-era France), and then there was his 1988 attack on the Bilateral Treaty with Japan. Remember that the this time saw widespread Japan-bashing in America, and it was also just two years after the Toshiba Affair (suggesting Japan itself didn’t think much of the Soviet threat).

  198. annamaria says

    It is commendable that you have a set of pure and prudent females in your family.
    However, what is the evidence of the Russian’s crimes? — The sensational story of the awkward “socialite” infiltrating NRI looks like another cheap and stupid stunt.
    If the IC were interested in national security for real, the stupendous scandal of Awan affair and the story of Chinese hacking of Clinton’s 30.000+ emails would not be possible.
    The Russian is used for “see, a squirrel” maneuver.
    Awans: https://www.fulcrumnews.com/blog/2017/8/16/awan-brothers-scandal-story
    Chinese president Mrs. Clinton: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/07/httpstruepunditcomfbi-lisa-page-dimes-out-top-fbi-officials-during-classified-house-testimony-bureau-bos.html

  199. University of Innopolis is in Innopolis though: city population 102 people, number of restaurants – 1.

    And since it’s only computer science – more male students than female students.

    Would you want to be in this place, 4 years for the bachelor’s degree?

    Location is more suitable for the 1 year master’s course and 1 year internship.

    But it might be cool in some ways. They have bus to Kazan every 30 minutes. 10 gigabit per second internet, swimming pool, new buildings etc.

    All classes are only in English. Professors and assistant professors are foreign, from the West, South Korea and even Pakistan. All have a lot of publications and doing research.

  200. annamaria says

    “To make Trump weak and to demoralize the enemy”
    And how the US citizens would know that Trump is weak? Perhaps the mighty MSM (CCM) should be factored in into making the “weakness?” https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Corporate_media
    “Since the news agenda is dictated by a very small number of very rich individuals, it has been suggested that the phrase “mainstream” would be more accurate if replaced by a label which respected the plutocratic agenda it promotes. On Wikispooks, the term CCM (Commercially/Corporate Controlled Media) is preferred.” https://www.rt.com/usa/433564-trump-putin-no-boxing-match/
    “The Mainstream Media, The Consequences of Nuclear War and the Drive Toward WW III” https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mainstream-media-the-consequences-of-nuclear-war-and-the-drive-toward-ww-iii/5647729

  201. Probably a lot of customers for buying Trump’s apartments in New York are from CIS countries – so he sees it as an important market.

  202. Fiztech at Dolgoprudniy…also had low percentage of girls. The result was that its students chased tail in many Moscow Institutes and Universities that had high proportion of females.

    There was an Institute of Culture, with mostly female students, right in Khimki, for the convenience of Phystech students.

  203. I would also assess that you yourself subscribe to ideological thinking on this issue (which is perfectly fine; I am sure, objectively speaking, that I do the same on, say, the Ukraine). For instance, the bizarre idea that it is the Russians/Dems coordinating against Trump is just a classical example of the many other 666D chess/mnogokhodovka theories about both Trump and Putin, just their inverse variant.

    Oh, I certainly do not think that the Dems are coordinating with the Russians. Nor do I think that Trump is. I do think that there is a possibility that elements within the Dem elite may have gone soft on Russians for business reasons, just as Trump may have been tempted to do. I also think it is possible that Russia may have given Trump’s enemies bait by deliberately leading a trail of cookie crumbs to his door. No coordination with democrats would be necessary (or desirable) for this purpose. This scandal would weaken, discredit, and distract the president. Even if it is better for Russia that Trump is in office (he sours relations with allies, draws China closer to Russia, etc.), it may be better still for Trump to be damaged and stumbling. It would be the same with the DNC e-mails. No coordination with Republicans necessary.

    those actions aimed against Russians – the sanctions and Ukraine weapons supplies – were clearly imposed against his will.

    Probably, but he acquiesced easily to them, unlike in the case of trade wars. A Ukrainian-American woman was on his short list for secretary of state.

  204. anonymous coward says

    Naturally, as the facilitator of science in Russia Skolkovo failed miserably. It enriched quite a few people, though.

    Both true and not true.

    I have relatives doing real, honest-to-goodness science there. In that sense, it achieved its goals, it’s a place for ambitious graduates to do real science instead of becoming “project managers” at IT corporations.

    But it’s true that the original intent of the place morphed quite a bit. The original intent was something like a cargo-cult “silicon valley”, a venture capital playground. It quickly changed into a real estate development + legal consultancy outfit.

    All in all, probably a good thing. Best to focus on what you can already do well instead of trying to blindly copy something you don’t understand.

  205. anonymous coward says

    They claim to be investing in science and education, but watching reports from there it seem so much money spent on construction

    As they should. Construction and real estate development is something that modern Russia knows how to do well. “Investing in science” is a cargo cult exploited by scammers.

    Focus on what you know, build the buildings and the science will eventually come.

  206. Mitleser says

    Even if it is better for Russia that Trump is in office (he sours relations with allies, draws China closer to Russia, etc.), it may be better still for Trump to be damaged and stumbling.

    For what?
    The problem is the American political class and among them, he is an outsider compared to previous POTUS. Weakening him does not help at all.

  207. The Big Red Scary says

    Naturally, as the facilitator of science in Russia Skolkovo failed miserably. It enriched quite a few people, though.

    The basic criticism of the history of Skolkovo is valid. And for all I know, it is still used as a corruption scheme. However, it is currently doing at least some good in facilitating science and “enriching” penurious aspirants. As far as I am aware, the only way to get a liveable stipend as an aspirant in Moscow is to get a fellowship in a lab at Skolkovo. However one can and should argue that a much greater number of aspirants should be funded by Skolkovo.

  208. The Big Red Scary says

    To my mind, much more successful in facilitating science have been the mega-grants for laboratories to bring in eminent scientists for a few months a year. When well run, these mega-grants subsidise a large number of researchers at all levels, and greatly increase the level of international collaboration.
    (There are also some examples of mega-grants being poorly spent on unnecessary luxuries such as fancy technical hardware for a seminar room, which is quickly out of date.)

  209. America is still at best a rival. Trump may not be an enemy, but he is not an ally either. He is still a competitor. If he was able to get what he wanted, Europe would be buying American natural gas and more American weapons, trade with China would be more advantageous for the USA, USA would have more money and it would be spent more on reforming and improving its military; thanks to Ivanka/Kushner he is an Israeli nationalist. None of these things are really good for Russia. Overall his goals with respect to Russian interests may be better than those of Clinton or neocons )he is still likely to get into a war), but now that Trump is in power and the neocon/Clinton danger is averted, it would still be better for Russia if he were tripped up in accomplishing his own goals.

    So a stumbling rival is better than a strong one. Even though Trump may have been better than Clinton, a stumbling Trump in disarray, preoccupied by internal problems and dissent, marginalized from his allies who wonder if he is compromised, is better than a strong and focused Trump.

  210. Thorfinnsson says

    American LNG is not competitive in Europe, as the Russians repeatedly point out. The only case for Europe to import it is political. In any case it’s not available in quantity anyway–export infrastructure is still quite limited (and hopefully stays that way so that our petrochemical and electric power generation industries remain low-cost producers).

  211. So a stumbling rival is better than a strong one. Even though Trump may have been better than Clinton, a stumbling Trump in disarray, preoccupied by internal problems and dissent, marginalized from his allies who wonder if he is compromised, is better than a strong and focused Trump.

    1) Russia or not, Trump is not strong. There is no reason to weaken him because there is already plenty of opposition, in America and abroad against him that prevent him from being strong and focused.

    2) If he stumbles and falls, he will be replaced by someone more in-line with the American political class which is more hostile than Trump. He is still the lesser evil.

    You still have not offered a good reason for Russia to weaken Trump’s presidency.

  212. AnonFromTN says

    Hate to disappoint, but I have some knowledge regarding these mega-grants, as a group in my former research institute in Russia tried to make me a “foreign participant” in one. This scheme was either dishonest, or utterly stupid. I suspect that it was both. Basically, groups in Russia were looking for someone outside as a “cover” to get money for themselves, with a kickback to a foreign scientist. I checked out “eminent scientists” who participated before and was appalled to find that most of them were second- or third-rate. At least my publication and citation record exceeded theirs several fold, and I am not even a member if the US Academy of Sciences.

    No successful scientist can afford to spend several months a year away from his/her lab in the US, as things invariably slowdown in your absence. If you are a real scientist, rather than a stuffed shirt, you facilitate research in your lab by ensuring the strategic direction of the work of your grad students and post-docs, telling them when something is a dead end you want to abandon, helping them troubleshoot, and doing some things with your own hands (science is like sports: if you lose shape by not working at the bench for a year or more, you never get into shape again).

    Besides, no reputable scientist would accept or sign his/her name to sub-par results generated in a sub-par lab. The idea that “the foreign scientist will go back, but the lab will remain” could only come from people who know nothing about experimental science. The lab IS the PI, as soon as s/he is gone, there is no lab. A room full of expensive toys and clueless people is not a lab. It is said that a bunch of sheep lead by a lion will achieve more than a bunch of lions lead by a sheep. It is just as true in science as in any other human endeavor.

    Pay is not the most important part of science, although people should get a living wage. Those who want more money go into law, medicine, finance, etc. Those occupations pay many times more than research and are a lot safer. If I screw up, I’d be out in the street, whereas if a banker screws up, s/he keeps his/her job and gets a bonus (remember 2008 crisis?). We get our reward only if we enjoy the process, although NIH-funded full professor gets decent pay.

  213. The Big Red Scary says

    Thank you for information from the experimentalist side. I’m sorry to hear that it’s not working out. I am a theorist and am familiar with the inner workings of a few mega-grants in my subject, two of which have been extremely successful in my estimation, one of which blew its money on a fancy seminar room.

    Pay is not the most important part of science, although people should get a living wage.

    The problem is that many good scientists in Russia were not until recently getting a living wage, and the better-run mega-grants and laboratories have improved this. If your base salary at a research institute is 20,000 rubles a month, and you get another 10,000 from doing some teaching, then an extra 30,000 from a grant doubles your salary and makes it liveable, so long as you have inherited a flat from babushka.

  214. Thorfinnsson says

    Traders who screw up get fired. So do litigators.

    Bruno Iksil will never have another job in banking again.

    It’s senior executives (or in law, partners) who don’t get fired.

    Typical behavior of any bureaucracy. The higher you rise, the less accountable you are.

  215. Dillon Sweeny says

    Looks I was right all along: she is a whore. At least US government officially accused her of being a whore.

    You are an idiot. Anyone the US government accuses of anything — anything at all — is guilty of one thing only: Acting against the interests of the wealthy elite who enslave America.

  216. AnonFromTN says

    My point exactly: people who skim most money in banking or law don’t get fired when they screw up. Instead, they get bonuses (i.e., skim even more money). No big firm that was bankrupt in 2008 was allowed to fail (under “too big to fail” ruse), they all were bailed out with our tax dollars. Basically, it’s cutthroat capitalism for all of us, capitalism while the banks, insurance companies, and the like turn profits, but pure socialism for the high-paid scum when they drive companies into the ground.

  217. AnonFromTN says

    Agree 100%. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

  218. Simpleguest says

    “…. but pure socialism for the high-paid scum when they drive companies into the ground.”

    Well, not quite.
    While, one of the characteristics of socialist economies was artificial life support for loss making companies or enterprises (provided by the state) their managers would usually be replaced (cynics would say shot) and new management brought in.

    Here, the main concern was the preservation of employment of the employees, not the well being of their management.

    The political establishment was a different story. Holding the company managers responsible was one way to protect and divert responsibility from the political system.

    While, saving “too big to fail” companies is exactly identical to the above and “socialist” in its nature, there is nothing socialist in rewarding the top management that we witness now.

  219. AnonFromTN says

    I think your opinion of socialism as it was actually implemented, at least in the later years of the USSR, is too rosy. Failed management was often replaced, but failed managers were appointed to manage other companies. Very rarely those guilty of mismanagement were punished in any way, just like in 2008 in the US. Naturally, the price of their mistakes was born by the average Ivan in the USSR exactly like by the average Joe in the US in 2008.

    Also, you are mixing the main declared concerns (preservation of employment, protection of wider economy, etc.) with the real ones. Greedy US elites transferred millions of industrial jobs to China, Mexico, and other countries with cheaper workforce, with dire consequences for the employment and wider economy, and no one in the political class batted an eyelid. On the contrary, all administrations and the Congress did everything in their power to help greedy rich do whatever increases their profits. From my perspective, actions speak louder than words.

  220. AK: Edited for usability.

    Andrei Nekrasov’s film ___
    The Real * BILL BROWDER * Story: THE MAGNITSKY ACT – BEHIND THE SCENES

    torrent link: https://www.bitchute DOTCOM video/lQ3qEwX66pIL/

  221. annamaria says

    Thank you.

  222. JamesinNewMexico says

    Russian people warn Americans not to give up their guns.

  223. H/T to tac.

    As tac says, share this before it’s taken down !!!!

  224. republic says

    This law was used in 1942 to imprison Ralph Townsend, an ex US consul in China, who wrote the classic anti Chinese work:” Ways that are Dark, the truth about China” in 1933.
    the book is free to download.

  225. republic says

    regarding Assange, according to a top official at RT, he is about to be kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy in the next few days or weeks.
    The President of Ecuador is abut to go to the UK on a state visit, also the US just started to increase its imports of Ecuadorian oil in the last few days

  226. republic says

    there are two methods that governments around the world use spies in a foreign country: one is diplomats who do the spying, if caught they get diplomatic immunity and are then expelled fromf that country, the other method is using agents under NOC, non official cover, such as businessmen, journalists, etc. If these people are arrested they can serve years in prison.

    I think that the Americans mostly use official diplomats in so called hostile countries like Russia or
    China. Most of these spy diplomats, who in some cases barely speak the local languages are very easy to spot by the local counter intelligent agents.

    China for sure uses a lot of NOC in the US. Probably the same is true for Russia.

  227. Greasy William says

    6/10. would smash.

  228. Johnny Rico says

    Maybe 5.5. 8 when she is holding a firearm.

    The real question is whether you would share a cell with her from now until the spy-swap.

  229. Greasy William says

    hell yes. Little older than I like but whatever.

  230. Ilyana_Rozumova says

    Americans think that she is Russian Mata Harry.

  231. They may have ignored it but her sponsor or her can hardly have been ignorant as it was the charge against one of the exchanged illegals group that Anna Chapman was part of. Chapman did not use a fake name.

  232. There is more chance of her being taken on as a White House intern than swapped. For the avoidance of doubt, she will never be exchanged while Trump is pres. She will get several years and be sent to the special mental hospital female prison in Texas where they send almost all long term foreign agents and terrorist women to stop them under-eating. They’ll drug her of course, and expect to see her quickly get fat.

  233. This may be far fetched, but maybe the NRA was the real target of an FBI operation, one that started under Obama (his administration had Tea party donors tax audited) and Butina was used, perhaps even brought into the country, as a way to justify it.