11:26 AM 6/17/2019 - U.S. Security Officials Still Consider Trump a Security Risk, and other stories

By Michael Novakhov (Mike Nova) June 17, 2019

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11:26 AM 6/17/2019

U.S. Security Officials Still Consider Trump a Security Risk
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 11:23 AM

It wasn’t over. It still isn’t over. Photo: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

The 21st and 22nd paragraphs of a weekend New York Times report on anti-Russian cybersecurity operations contained a harrowing detail. President Trump reportedly “had not been briefed in any detail” on the operations, “for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials.”

That is to say, American national-security officials are declining to share Russia-related intelligence with the president of the United States because they view him as a security risk.

The denouement of the Mueller report seemed to bury the question of secret Russian leverage over Trump. In the days after Attorney General William Barr delivered his misleading summary of its contents, Trump’s allies declared all grounds for suspicion of his activity a debunked conspiracy theory, and the news media engaged in an orgy of self-flagellation over their pursuit of Trump’s connections that — according to Barr — went nowhere.

But the Mueller report focused on criminal questions, not counterintelligence. Representative Adam Schiff recently noted that Congress stopped receiving counterintelligence briefings on Trump and Russia after FBI director James Comey was fired two years ago. Whether Russia still has blackmail or financial leverage over Trump is a giant question hovering over the presidency, with no clear avenue of resolution.

That Vladimir Putin had secret leverage over Trump in the very recent past is now a matter of public record. Mueller found that during the campaign, Trump was negotiating a deal to build towers in Moscow that promised a potential payout of several hundred million dollars “without assuming significant liabilities or financing commitments” — that is, a guaranteed payoff, similar to the generous putative business deals Putin often makes secretly with other foreign right-wing politicians he has courted. Putin’s leverage in this transaction was compounded by the fact that Trump denied its existence during the campaign, giving Russia blackmail leverage over him.

Trump’s defenders have seized on several anti-Russian steps his administration has taken as supposed evidence that Putin has no secret hold on the president. The dilemma, of course, is that Trump’s Russophilia makes him an extreme outlier in his party, which means his government is staffed with people committed to very different policies toward Moscow.

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National Review editor Rich Lowry cites the Times report as more proof that “despite his rhetoric, Trump has been tougher on Russian than Obama was,” glossing over the part of the article reporting that Trump was not informed of the actions for fear he would undermine them.

The same tension has played out in other policies where Republicans have forced hawkish stances upon a very unwilling president. After Congress passed anti-Russia sanctions by a veto-proof supermajority, Trump fumed in private, and “it took aides four days to persuade Trump to sign the bill.”

Trump’s response to the report inadvertently confirmed its most damning passage. Even if it isn’t true that the U.S. is preparing aggressive countermeasures against Russian cyberstrikes, Trump had no reason to deny it. The threat serves as valuable deterrence. Instead, just as he raged privately against sanctions on Russia, he raged publicly against the report of his government’s anti-Russian acts:

Trump has repeatedly met with Putin in unusually secret conditions, refusing to allow foreign-policy staffers to attend, and even at one point confiscating a translator’s notes. Mueller has finished his work, and — save for foreign-policy bureaucrats keeping their actions secret from the president — there’s no obvious mechanism for identifying and limiting the threat of Russian leverage over him. For all we know, Trump is still being promised, or even receiving, payoffs from Russia. None of these actions would amount to crimes. They do, however, constitute a crisis — not just of national security but of national sovereignty.

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How to recognize the Intelligence Operations? M.N.: You know it when you see it. The next step is to describe and to explain what you see, as the coherent and cohesive concept, the elements of the explanatory hypothesis, based on the evidence presented. | There are 15 outside investigations into Trump — and he relishes it - POLITICO 17/06/19 05:03by noreply@blogger.com (Michael Novakhov (Mike Nova))
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 10:43 AM

The Trump Investigations Blog By Michael Novakhov - Review Of News And Opinions

How to recognize the Intelligence Operations?

M.N.: "You know it when you see it", as it was said about the definition of pornography.
The next step is to describe and to explain what you see, as the coherent and cohesive concept, the elements of the interpretative, explanatory hypothesis, based on the evidence presented.

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There are 15 outside investigations into Trump — and he relishes it - POLITICO
17/06/19 05:03

Trump, White House aides signal a willingness to act with impunity in drive for reelection - The Washington Post

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Opinion | A Down and Dirty White House
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 10:38 AM

WASHINGTON — It is very disorienting when those who are supposed to be our highest moral exemplars have no morals — not even of the alley-cat variety.

During the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, it was stunning to see wide swaths of clergymen, responsible for teaching children right from wrong, perverting right and wrong.

Now it is shocking to see an American president with a twisted sense of right and wrong. In yet another Nureyev leap into the absurd, Donald Trump went from no-collusion to pro-collusion, as Susan Glasser put it in The New Yorker, saying that he would welcome foreign governments’ peddling dirt on his political rivals. Why bother to alert the F.B.I. if you are getting good oppo?

I have seen a lot of politicians lie — even ones I swore never would. I have watched other Republican leaders play on white fears and choke off checks and balances. It’s tough to match Dick Cheney for putting yourself above the law.

When I covered Bush 41, Bush loyalists were looking overseas for dirt on Bill Clinton during the 1992 race. There were unfounded rumors that, while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Clinton had written a letter about renouncing his citizenship to protest the Vietnam war.

As Michael Isikoff and Eugene Robinson wrote in The Washington Post in October 1992: “A senior State Department official this month ordered the U.S. Embassy in London to conduct an ‘extremely thorough’ search for files on Bill Clinton’s years as a graduate student in England, including any documents relating to the Democratic presidential candidate’s draft status and citizenship, according to department officials.” The instructions came at a time when Republicans were escalating their attacks on Clinton’s draft history.

Around the same time, the Britons went on their own fishing expedition for Clinton’s files. Betsey Wright, a former Clinton campaign official, told reporters that the campaign had received reports that Republicans had approached Tories for help in rifling through files to find damaging information on Clinton.

James Baker, Bush’s chief of staff, was so anguished about “that awful little passport pimple,” as the president called the scandal, that he offered to resign.

Such shame seems quaint in Trumpworld. The president is an unabashed gargoyle atop the White House, chomping on American values.

The way Trump publicly wallows in his mendaciousness and amorality is unique in presidential history. His motto might as well be: “I cannot not tell a lie.” His ego is too fragile to play patriarch to the country, so he takes the more ruinous role of provocateur.

There’s no vaccination against the vile machinations of Trump. But there are some signs, in this sickened capital, that antibodies are kicking in. The president and his top officials are getting taken to task by a range of government watchdogs.

Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, tweeted on Thursday, “I would not have thought that I needed to say this,” as a preface to her stern statement: “It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election. This is not a novel concept.”

Even craven Republican lawmakers — at long last — were squirming over Trump’s contention to George Stephanopoulos that foreign interference in our election would be swell.

Also on Thursday, Special Counsel Henry Kerner recommended that “repeat offender” Kellyanne Conway be removed from her job for violating the Hatch Act, also known as the Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, which bars federal workers from tainting the workplace with politics.

Kerner said his move was unprecedented, but told The Post: “You know what else is unprecedented? Kellyanne Conway’s behavior. In interview after interview, she uses her official capacity to disparage announced candidates, which is not allowed.” The president, tireless champion of the First Amendment, said Conway was merely exercising her right to free speech.

The Onion chimed in with this headline: “Kellyanne Conway Decides to Lie Low Until Rule of Law Dies Down.”

Trump may have lost his knack for stiletto nicknames. “Sleepy Joe” and “Nervous Nancy” don’t cut it. (Pelosi looked anything but nervous in her “Kill Bill” yellow zippered motorcycle jacket.) And he may be nervous himself because of “devastating” internal polling showing him trailing Joe Biden in key states, as The Times’s Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman wrote. He denied the polls existed but later instructed his campaign to play up different data.

Trump doesn’t want to lose just when he seems to be getting more comfortable with all the power he wields.

He makes it so easy for everyone to focus on the tweets and the maniacal, moronic reality show that you have to struggle to look away and take the measure of what he’s doing.

And what he’s doing is altering domestic and foreign policy in terrible ways while running up huge deficits.

The Trump White House may be a clown show and a criminal enterprise. But it’s also an actual presidency.

It’s turning out to be a genuinely reactionary administration led by a wannabe authoritarian who refuses to recognize constitutional checks on power. The real danger is not the antics but the policies. If Trump isn’t careful, he’s going to add substance to his administration. And it won’t be the kind we want.

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How to recognize the Intelligence Operations? - Google Search
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 10:10 AM

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Nxivm Trial: Sex Cult Tried to Gather Intelligence on ‘Enemies,’ Including Schumer
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 10:07 AM

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The cache of documents surfaced in 2018 when the F.B.I. searched the home of a senior member of the cultlike group Nxivm.

Photographs from the search showed agents had found a clear plastic box with a red lid in the basement of a home belonging to Nancy Salzman, Nxivm’s co-founder, who was known as “Prefect.”

Inside, agents said, were folders of financial reports labeled with names of journalists, judges, cult experts and others, including Senator Chuck Schumer; the then state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer; and the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

Most, if not all, of the financial material was inaccurate, an F.B.I. agent, Michael Weniger, said. But Nxivm members appeared to be making a genuine effort to gather information on the targets.

“The vast majority of the individuals that had folders inside the box were individuals that had some type of criticism of Nxivm and or the defendant,” he testified on Thursday in the racketeering and sex trafficking case of the group’s leader, Keith Raniere.

Mr. Weniger finished testifying on Friday, closing the prosecution’s case six weeks after it began on May 7. Afterward, the defense declined to present witnesses, and in the only instance during the trial in which he has spoken publicly, Mr. Raniere confirmed to the judge in a soft voice that he would not be taking the stand.

Summations are scheduled for Monday.

Over the course of the trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, six former Nxivm members offered wrenching and sometimes lurid accounts of manipulation and sexual abuse.

But Mr. Weniger appeared to serve as an expert of sorts, someone who could draw from broad knowledge of Nxivm and introduce documents involving members who were not called to the stand.

Mr. Raniere, 58, co-founded Nxivm (pronounced nex-ee-um) in the 1990s as a self-help organization based near Albany. He is now on trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy, identity theft, extortion, forced labor, money laundering, wire fraud and sex trafficking.

Although he presented himself as a humanitarian, prosecutors have said Mr. Raniere, known as “Vanguard,” exploited his followers, particularly women. Some were branded with his initials and assigned to have sex with him.

Much of Mr. Weniger’s testimony emphasized the conspiratorial nature of Nxivm and the lengths to which its members would go to monitor those whom they perceived as hostile.

Earlier in the trial, a witness identified only as Daniela said Nxivm tried to obtain personal information and banking records of people on a “list of enemies” who members believed wanted to destroy the group.

She added that she hacked into the computer accounts of several people at the behest of Mr. Raniere and a Nxivm member named Kristin Keeffe.

As part of that effort, Daniela said, she obtained years of emails from the account of the liquor magnate Edgar M. Bronfman Sr., whose daughter, Clare Bronfman, was a senior member of Nxivm.

Among those whose names appeared on folders in Ms. Salzman’s basement were journalists with The Albany Times Union, which had run investigative stories about Nxivm, and four federal judges who had presided over cases involving the group.

Also included was information about the political operative Roger Stone, who Mr. Weniger said had worked for Nxivm; Rick Ross, a cult expert the group had sued; Kristin Snyder, a Nxivm student who was presumed to have died in Alaska; and Mr. Bronfman.

Mr. Weniger said that Ms. Bronfman appeared to have paid an investigations company in Montreal “upward of $400,000.” Email messages introduced as evidence showed that her payments to the company, Canaprobe Group, were for financial reports.

Ms. Keeffe forwarded some of that material to Emiliano Salinas, a Nxivm member whose father, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had been president of Mexico, the messages also showed. Mr. Salinas then sent it to a man at a private equity fund. And that man sent the information to a private investigator in New York who attempted to verify it, Mr. Weniger said.

In some email exchanges, Mr. Raniere “specifically discusses with Kristin Keeffe the relationship Nxivm had with Canaprobe,” Mr. Weniger testified.

Mr. Weniger acknowledged that it appeared that Canaprobe had given the Nxivm members bogus information and that Ms. Bronfman had eventually sued the company.

One of Mr. Raniere’s lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, suggested to Mr. Weniger that Ms. Keeffe may have been carrying out investigations on her own.

He also portrayed her as paranoid, pointing to an instance in which she was suspicious of a black pickup truck in her neighborhood and an occasion when she theorized that house painters might be conducting undercover surveillance of her home.

But Mr. Weniger testified that Ms. Keeffe was not the only member of Nxivm to exhibit paranoia.

At one point, Mr. Weniger said, Nxivm sent investigators to Key West, Fla., and, apparently, Palm Springs, Calif., to look for Ms. Snyder, the former Nxivm student.

In 2003 Ms. Snyder left an “intensive” Nxivm course in a hotel in Anchorage and wrote a note saying she had been “brainwashed,” The Times Union reported. She was then believed to have intentionally capsized a kayak in the icy waters of Resurrection Bay.

Mr. Raniere believed word of her death was a conspiracy to create “negative publicity,” according to Daniela’s testimony. And Mr. Weniger said there was a belief among Nxivm members that Ms. Snyder “was still alive and that she was moving from place to place.”

The animosity toward Mr. Bronfman, who was the chief executive of the Seagram Company, appeared to be driven by the fact that he was quoted in a story in Forbes magazine in 2003 as saying of Nxivm: “I think it’s a cult.”

He expanded on that opinion in an email to Ms. Bronfman, writing in an apparent reference to Ms. Snyder and Ms. Salzman “a young woman died in Alaska and some people blame Nancy’s diagnosis,” then criticizing the long hours that Nxivm courses typically lasted.

“Having the session go from 8:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. is extreme and it’s what cults do to gain dominance over their victims,” he wrote. “A group led by two people who call themselves Vanguard and Prefect certainly sounds like a cult.”

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Why It's Necessary to Bring Jewish Communism into Full View » Mosaic
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 9:39 AM

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Why It's Necessary to Bring Jewish Communism into Full View

Airing the complicity of some American Jews with Soviet criminality is essential to the honor and the reputation of the Jewish people.

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Response

Ruth R. Wisse

June 17 2019

About the author

Ruth R. Wisse is a research professor at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her most recent book is No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (2013).

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David Evanier has done a great service in profiling Morton Sobell, one of the American Jews who spied for Stalin’s KGB. Though Evanier had already covered some of this ground in his 1991 novel Red Love, his account in Mosaic gives us facts and information unadorned by the arts of fiction.

The biggest fact is this: the Soviet project was founded on falsehood and sustained and exported through deceit. In some ways, the export version has been more successful than the native one. It has been easier for post-Soviet Russia to clean up after Chernobyl than for Americans to clean up from the decades-long Soviet infiltration into American politics, society, and culture. The only antidote is truth.

“Many of these American Communists were Jewish,” writes Evanier, truthfully, about the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), which recruited agents and followers in many branches of culture as well as industry. He credits his own disaffection from Communism to his 1962 stay in an Israeli kibbutz where the combined presence of Holocaust survivors and dedicated pioneers jolted him into a fresh appreciation of his own Jewishness. By contrast, Sobell and his cohort showed no interest in “Jewish history, culture, or the birth of Israel”—or in their own complicity in Soviet crimes, including crimes against their fellow Jews. There is likewise no reason to think that most former American Jewish Communists and fellow travelers experienced Evanier’s thoroughgoing change of heart.

It is admittedly risky to raise the subject of Jewish involvement with Communism. Anti-Semitism trolls for excuses to blame Jews for anything and everything. After the fall of the Soviet empire, some citizens of countries that had been for decades under Soviet control found it convenient to explain their lingering anti-Jewish animus as payback for the Jewish Bolsheviks who had oppressed them.

On the American scene, Harvey Klehr in his response to Evanier’s essay very helpfully puts the numbers in perspective, showing what a small percentage of American Jews actually belonged to the CPUSA or supported Bolshevism. Still, there’s reason to worry that just raising the subject could provide fuel for dedicated anti-Semites. And yet, however legitimate the concern, it is dwarfed by the greater dangers of sustained self-deception.

Here, in three parts, is why I say that.

American Jews who joined the Communist party and spied for the Soviets betrayed the Jews before they betrayed America.

To become a member of the party was to undergo a kind of conversion—a voluntary conversion, and one not literally requiring baptism, but, particularly for a Jew, an act far more radical than any mere change in political affiliation. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 established the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the Communist International (Comintern) undertook “to struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state.” Yet whereas other nationalities were allowed to “transition” to self-dissolution, Jews, already scattered among the nations, were denounced as reactionary for wanting to retain their Jewishness.

Marxism-Leninism, ideologically incompatible with Judaism, specifically required the Jewish people to dissolve into the international proletariat. As part of its need to eradicate both the Jewish religion and Jewish nationhood, the Soviet Union forbade the teaching of Hebrew, a language essential to both. The “Jewish sections” of the party, the yevsektsii, enforced this program of Sovietization. As the historian Yuri Slezkine writes in his The House of Government, while Polish, Latvian, and Georgian high-ranking members of the party “seemed to assume that proletarian internationalism was compatible with their native tongues, songs, and foods,” high-ranking Jewish members did not speak Yiddish at home or try to pass anything Jewish on to their children. Many proved their new loyalty by pursuing their fellow Jews with special vigor.

When it came to Zionism, the Communist party under Stalin hailed the 1929 Arab pogroms against Jews in Palestine as the start of an Arab Communist revolution and created the watchwords of 20th-century anti-Zionism: a leftist version of anti-Semitism that condemned Jewish national aspirations as a crime against the international order.

The slogans of anti-Zionism were forged in Russia and exported to America with the aid of Jewish Communists in the years when Palestine was the only potential haven for Jews fleeing Hitlerism and continental anti-Semitism. Indeed, Jews were among the most passionate of all anti-Zionists; Isaac Deutscher’s invention of the paradoxical term “non-Jewish Jew” camouflages the many thousands who were vehemently anti-Jewish Jews.

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Thus, there is nothing new or strange in the fact that, in today’s universities, Jews of the far left, including Israelis, are some of the most vociferously anti-Israel professors and agitators on campus. Where other minorities may freely display their special grievances and ethnocentric resentments, a percentage of Jews join the intersectional coalition of the “oppressed” in attacking the Jewish homeland for its determination to be, and to remain, the Jewish homeland.

The United States, which prides itself in its victory over the Nazis, will never countenance the anti-Semitism of the alt-right. Anti-Zionism, on the other hand, has become a linchpin of the left, with some Jews carrying its flag as they did in the 1930s. That is one reason why it is necessary to bring Jewish Communism into full view, if only to help slow the spread of its anti-Jewish venom under such current guises as “socialism,” “social justice,” and “voices for peace.”

Exposing Jewish complicity with Soviet criminality is essential to the reputation and the future of Yiddish.

The Communist appropriation of the Yiddish language as part of its war on Jewishness has not yet been acknowledged. When the Bolshevik leadership came to realize that it could not simply dissolve its Jewish communities overnight, it declared Yiddish the Jewish instrument of Sovietization, and toward that end it subsidized Yiddish education and culture. This won praise from those who either shared Soviet aims or were prepared to overlook them.

The results were morally catastrophic. Yiddish writers, scholars, dramatists, and actors eager to work in their professions adjusted to the demands of Sovietization, which included active promotion of the criminal regime. By this method, even as the Soviet constitution formally outlawed anti-Semitism directed against persons of Jewish descent, the Soviet Union strove to outlaw the propagation of a Jewish future. Yiddish was the instrument of doing away with Judaism and Jewish life.

To be sure, from the beginnings of modern Jewish politics, Yiddish had been featured as the language of the downtrodden, associated with socialism and the labor movement and also with Zionism and Labor Zionism (the latter of which tried to amalgamate national and Marxist goals). Some of these movements genuinely valued Yiddish; for others, it was a means to an end. Only Communism seized upon the uses of Yiddish as an anti-Jewish language.

In 1922, to promote world revolution (while greatly exaggerating Jewish political influence), the Comintern established in New York the Yiddish daily Morgen Freiheit, controlling the paper from Moscow while proclaiming its editorial independence. Because it operated in Yiddish, the Freiheit appeared to be under Jewish auspices and responsive to Jewish concerns. But in synch with all Soviet-sponsored channels around the world, it maligned Judaism and turned hatred of “Zionists” into a virtue.

Anti-Jewish caricatures that appeared in the Freiheit were indistinguishable from those in the interwar Nazi press. American capitalism was second only to the Jewish bourgeoisie as a target of the paper’s editorial ire, and the Soviets encouraged its American Yiddish readers to betray both their Jewish homeland and their American home.

Yes, other Jews on the left, along with Zionists and traditionalists, mounted a stiff resistance to Communism in Yiddish (and in English). But the financial resources and support of Moscow gave Yiddish Communists a practical advantage. In this way, possibly for the first time in Jewish history, a Jewish language was employed to promote an evil regime.

There has so far been no reckoning from within Yiddish ranks of some of the hateful writings to which the language gave safe harbor. To the contrary, some students of Yiddish today are still seduced by what the author Vivian Gornick lauds as the “romance” of Communism. This obliges lovers of Yiddish like myself to assume, with discriminating intelligence, the admittedly difficult and unpleasant task of exposing and judging Soviet-stained Yiddish culture by the standards of Jewish civilization. As we share that culture’s moments of joy and fathom its losses, culling the wisdom contained in its vast literature, we should also undertake for Yiddish the same kind of truth-telling that David Evanier has done in the case of the Jewish spy Morton Sobell.

By far the most consequential aspect of Soviet spying in America was the sustained denial by the spies themselves of responsibility for their crimes, and by their supporters and fellow travelers of complicity in the shared turpitude. On the contrary, all continued to affirm their innocence.

Had spies like the Rosenbergs, Sobell, and the others admitted their deeds, they might have helped to restore a measure of moral clarity for Americans, and assisted in the task of demolishing the tyranny they had served. That they did not and could not tell the truth testifies to Communism’s grounding in lies and in its Orwellian inversion of evil for good.

Here the difference from fascism is instructive. Germany flaunted its jackboot intentions; the Soviet Union invaded the West behind Picasso’s dove of peace. By maintaining the lie of their innocence, the spies and their supporters hoped to damage America perhaps even more than they had through the treason of which they stood accused.

And, to some substantial degree, they succeeded. Thanks in part to the unwitting cooperation of their accusers, the charade of innocence made possible the perpetuation of the big lie.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which was founded in the 1930s to investigate both fascist and Communist infiltration, focused exclusively on the latter after the allied victory over the Nazis in Europe, and by the 1950s had broadened its scope to include members of Moscow-directed Communist cells in Hollywood and elsewhere.

The prosecutorial overreach of HUAC and then of Senator Joseph McCarthy stirred sympathies both for the defendants and for those fired or blacklisted without having been proved guilty of any crime. The organized left then used “McCarthyism” to invert the accuser and the accused. Communists who refused to testify were hailed for their heroism, while those (like the director Elia Kazan) who told the truth were tarred as betrayers. The speed with which McCarthy was relieved of his post did not prevent his name and image from being used as evidence of American brutality. In this way, the attempt to root out the network of subterfuge backfired, or rather was hijacked by the very networks it had hoped to disrupt. The Communists who lied about their affiliation reinforced the damage of the spies who maintained their innocence.

It is easy to see why the same Hollywood that, rushing to satisfy public pressure, created a blacklist of Communists in the late 1940s would later give way just as spinelessly to the leftists it had once tried to expel. Movies like The Front, television programs like Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist, and an assembly line of books—of which Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time and Victor Navasky’s Naming Names are only the best known—created a pro-Communist martyrology. The real collusion with Russia—the one we had good reason to worry about—was quashed by tales of American injustice.

This was a technique the Soviets perfected over decades, from the murder trial of the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, to the prosecution of the Scottsboro Boys, to the espionage trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and beyond, in each case using local propagandists to denounce the American justice system regardless of its actual results. Portraying America as the persecutor of powerless innocents silenced accusations of the Soviet criminal regime and undermined American national self-confidence.

The media, the intelligentsia, and the academy paved the way. The cold war was fought not only on the military and diplomatic front but also, especially in its later decades, in the cafeterias and on the playing fields of elite American universities. Every Communist who lied was a soldier in that war.

One could readily provide nuanced arguments about why Jews were attracted to movements that set out to achieve what the Hebrew prophets had prophesied, and other nuanced arguments about the genuine imperfections of America. But nothing changes the fact that a meaningful number of Jews tried to replace the American way of life by a system that claimed to be ostensibly better even as they conspired to conceal that it was indescribably worse.

Senator Bernie Sanders does not say what he saw on his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, instead coddling the dream of an imposed socialism as though it had never been tried. Many Communist sympathizers and their descendants, now joined by new recruits, still lack the courage to say the spies betrayed America, and in what evil cause.

We expect countries under foreign occupation, some of whose citizens committed evil, to air those offenses as a way of forswearing their repetition. Jews can expect no less of themselves, and for the same reasons. David Evanier’s admirable essay is one such attempt to reestablish truth.

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The Trump Investigations Blog By Michael Novakhov - Review Of News And Opinions

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The UK government proposes reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero by 2050, under a new plan to tackle climate change.

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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from mikenov on Twitter. Trump, the Fed, Boeing, Deutsche Bank, Gary Woodland - 5 Things You Must Know thestreet.com/markets/5-thin… via @TheStreet Posted by mikenov on Monday, June 17th, 2019 10:54am

» Trump, the Fed, Boeing, Deutsche Bank, Gary Woodland - 5 Things You Must Know
17/06/19 06:56 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
Michael_Novakhov shared this story . Here are five things you must know for Monday, June 17: 1. -- Stock Futures Rise Modestly Ahead of Fed Meeting U.S. stock futures rose modestly on Monday as investors adopted a cau...

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Stupid, Incompetent, Racist, Loser: Do Trump's Tweets Project His Own Faults Onto Others?
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 7:55 AM

Donald Trump's propensity for ridiculing his opponents (both real and imagined) is well known to even the most casual observer. He genuinely seems to delight in name calling, belittling, and demeaning rhetoric, and like most bullies he rarely passes on the opportunity to denigrate his foes. So, not surprisingly, Trump seized on the occasion of Father's Day weekend to unleash a torrent of ugly comments directed at others.

The president's ire this week was trained on some his favorite scapegoats: Democrats, Hillary Clinton, the mainstream news media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. There is, of course, nothing especially newsworthy about the fact that Trump spent much of Father's Day weekend engaged in his favorite pastime: savagely degrading and disparaging others on Twitter.

But what I wish to highlight is the specifically rhetorical character of his Twitter putdowns. They are all governed by one unifying motivation: projection. Simply put, Trump consistently projects his own worst shortcomings and sins onto others. In fact, there is no better insight into Donald Trump and what he thinks about himself, if only unconsciously, than the things he repeatedly says about others in 280-character bursts.

Indeed, Trump's most frequent putdowns on Twitter function as a virtual Rorschach test for his own personality traits and behavior. A few of the president's favorite putdowns as of June 17, 2019 include: loser (234 tweets), dumb (222 tweets), terrible (204 tweets), stupid (183 tweets), weak (156 tweets), dishonest (115 tweets), incompetent (92 tweets), fool (83 tweets), pathetic (72 tweets), moron (52 tweets), and racist (50 tweets).

Think about it: why would you repeatedly—not occasionally, but repeatedly—call a wide array of individuals and groups "stupid," "dishonest" and "racist" if you did not consistently see these traits in yourself? You wouldn't. You also wouldn't feel the need to constantly affirm how smart, honest, and not racist you are (remember Trump famously told Piers Morgan, "I'm the least racist person anybody is going to meet,") unless you were exceedingly apprehensive about those very things.

Given Trump's tendency to talk always and only about himself even when his comments are explicitly directed at others, it is worth looking more closely at what else Trump had to say over Father's Day weekend. In a series of tweets, Trump rhetorically projected concerns about his own criminality, corruption, deceitfulness, dishonesty, and treasonous behavior onto others. In short, he took considerable time out of his weekend to remind the world that he sees himself as a "national disgrace." And who am I to argue with the president's own self-assessment?

As a matter of fact, Trump's obvious self-loathing goes a long way toward explaining much of his rhetoric. For instance, Trump is famously concerned with ratings. One of his favorite putdowns of a media outlet is that it is failing, has poor circulation numbers, or weak ratings. Trump's obsession with ratings transparently reflects anxiety over his own poor polling numbers. He repeatedly reminds us how beloved he is precisely because he feels unloved. In the words of one famous Twitter user, "Sad!"

Similarly, prior to being elected president, Trump's primary foray into politics was as a sort self-appointed leader and spokesperson for the birther movement. Aside from the obvious racist aspect of birther rhetoric, why was Trump so obsessed with convincing his fellow Americans that Barak Obama was "illegitimate"?

Trump desperately needed people to see Obama as an imposter, as someone unworthy of his success. In keeping with his personality, Trump was simply rhetorically projecting his own deep feelings of unworthiness, his own sense of being a fake. And where have we heard this term "fake" before? It is, of course, Trump's favorite putdown of the mainstream news media.

In fact, in his first 878 days as president, Donald Trump has tweeted about fake news 468 times (more than once every other day ... can you say, "projection"?). What this rhetoric reveals about Trump is far more significant than anything it says about the actual news media or even its coverage of him. It reveals that Trump regards himself as a fake, a phony, and an imposter. More recently Trump has taken to referring to the media as "corrupt," which also suggests a great deal about Trump's shifting opinion of himself.

If ever there was an argument for impeachment, it is that no one knows Donald Trump better than Donald Trump. Listen carefully to what he believes about himself based on his repeated criticisms of others.

Brian L. Ott, a professor of communication studies and director of the TTU Press at Texas Tech University, is co-author, with Greg Dickinson, of "The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage."

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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17/06/19 07:14 - Video: Trump on Mueller, immigration and putting his personal touch on Oval Office: Part 2, and other news
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 7:46 AM

The Trump Investigations Blog By Michael Novakhov - Review Of News And Opinions

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17/06/19 07:14 from Trump Investigations from Michael_Novakhov (32 sites)
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From: ABC News Duration: 06:45 Asked by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office whether his campaign would accept such information from foreigners or hand it over the FBI, Trump said, "I think maybe you do both." ABC News's Yo...

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RT @realDonaldTrump: The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go….However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I k…

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The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go….However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT

Posted by

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78011 likes, 18301 retweets

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Trump, the Fed, Boeing, Deutsche Bank, Gary Woodland – 5 Things You Must Know

Michael_Novakhov shared this story .

Here are five things you must know for Monday, June 17:

1. — Stock Futures Rise Modestly Ahead of Fed Meeting

U.S. stock futures rose modestly on Monday as investors adopted a cautious stance on risk heading into this week’s Federal Reserve meeting.

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The U.S. central will begin its two-day rate-setting meeting Tuesday in Washington against a backdrop of moderately improving consumer strength and a broader economy growing at around 2.1%. Fed-watchers aren’t expecting any changes to interest rates when the Fed makes a statement Wednesday afternoon, but will be looking for signals from Chairman Jerome Powell as to how – and when – the central bank will react to low inflation and a trade-led slowdown in the global economy.

Contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27 points, futures for the S&P 500 were up 3.20 points, and Nasdaq futures rose 15.75 points.

Gains were limited, however, by comments from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who told CNBC that the U.S. would make good on President Donald Trump’s threat to slap fresh tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports if the two sides can’t reach a trade pact.

“We will eventually make a deal, but if we don’t, the president is perfectly happy with continuing the tariff movements that we’ve already announced, as well as imposing the new ones that he has temporarily suspended,” Ross told CNBC during an interview at the Paris Air Show.

The economic calendar in the U.S. on Monday includes the Empire State Manufacturing Survey for June at 8:30 a.m. ET, and the National Association of Home Builders Housing Market Index for June at 10 a.m.

2. — Trump Warns of Market Crash if He’s Not Re-Elected in 2020

As Donald Trump prepares to launch his 2020 campaign, he posted a warning over Twitter: If he’s not elected, the markets will crash.

“The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go,” wrote Trump on Twitter over the weekend. “However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before!”

Trump has claimed several times this year and as recently as Friday that the U.S. stock market would be 5,000 to 10,000 points higher if the Federal Reserve hadn’t raised interest rates four times in 2018.

Trump also announced on Twitter that his 2020 re-election campaign will launch Tuesday in Florida.

“Tuesday will be a Big Crowd and Big Day!” he said.

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RT @realDonaldTrump: The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I k… by realDonaldTrump
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 7:01 AM

Mikenov On Twitter

The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT

Posted by

realDonaldTrump on Saturday, June 15th, 2019 1:44pm

Retweeted by

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Posted by

mikenov on Monday, June 17th, 2019 10:54am

Trump, the Fed, Boeing, Deutsche Bank, Gary Woodland - 5 Things You Must Know
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 6:56 AM

Here are five things you must know for Monday, June 17:

1. -- Stock Futures Rise Modestly Ahead of Fed Meeting

U.S. stock futures rose modestly on Monday as investors adopted a cautious stance on risk heading into this week's Federal Reserve meeting.

Download Now: To be a profitable investor you first need to know the rules. Get Jim Cramer’s 25 Rules for Investing Special Report

Special Offer: Become a smarter investor with Action Alerts PLUS. Click here to save 57% today

The U.S. central will begin its two-day rate-setting meeting Tuesday in Washington against a backdrop of moderately improving consumer strength and a broader economy growing at around 2.1%. Fed-watchers aren't expecting any changes to interest rates when the Fed makes a statement Wednesday afternoon, but will be looking for signals from Chairman Jerome Powell as to how - and when - the central bank will react to low inflation and a trade-led slowdown in the global economy.

Contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27 points, futures for the S&P 500 were up 3.20 points, and Nasdaq futures rose 15.75 points.

Gains were limited, however, by comments from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who told CNBC that the U.S. would make good on President Donald Trump's threat to slap fresh tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports if the two sides can't reach a trade pact.

"We will eventually make a deal, but if we don't, the president is perfectly happy with continuing the tariff movements that we've already announced, as well as imposing the new ones that he has temporarily suspended," Ross told CNBC during an interview at the Paris Air Show.

2. -- Trump Warns of Market Crash if He's Not Re-Elected in 2020

As Donald Trump prepares to launch his 2020 campaign, he posted a warning over Twitter: If he's not elected, the markets will crash.

"The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go," wrote Trump on Twitter over the weekend. "However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before!"

Trump has claimed several times this year and as recently as Friday that the U.S. stock market would be 5,000 to 10,000 points higher if the Federal Reserve hadn't raised interest rates four times in 2018.

Trump also announced on Twitter that his 2020 re-election campaign will launch Tuesday in Florida.

"Tuesday will be a Big Crowd and Big Day!" he said.

3. -- Boeing Faces Turbulence in Restoring Public's Confidence in 737 MAX

A poll found that 25% of people asked wouldn't fly on a Boeing (BA - Get Report) 737 MAX jet once the aircraft is again cleared to fly following two fatal crashes since October.

"As you may know, the Boeing 737 MAX airplane has been grounded by the federal government until problems with the planes have been corrected. If the government certifies that the problems of the Boeing 737 MAX airplane are corrected, will you fly on them just as readily as on any other planes, or will you try to avoid them even though they have been certified as safe or do you not have an opinion about this one way or the other?" asked the NBC News and Wall Street Journal poll of about 1,000 Americans earlier this month.

A quarter of respondents said they would avoid the jet, while 37% indicated they would get on board as readily as on any other airplane. A total of 36% of respondents said they had no opinion, with 2% saying they weren't sure.

The grounding of the 737 MAX, the world's most-sold jet, comes as the Paris Air Show begins this week. New product announcements likely are to be few at the industry's marquee event.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg

said the aerospace giant made a "mistake" in handling a problematic cockpit warning system in 737 MAX jets before the two deadly crashes of the plane.

Muilenburg told reporters in Paris on Sunday that Boeing's communication "was not consistent" and that's "unacceptable."

"We're going to bring a MAX back up in the air that will be one of the safest airplanes ever to fly," Muilenburg said Sunday. "But we also know it will take time rebuilding the confidence of our customers and the flying public, and this will be a long-term effort."

4. -- Deutsche Bank's Overhaul Includes Creation of 'Bad Bank' - Report

Deutsche Bank (DB - Get Report) is readying a revamp and may shut or slash all equity and trading business outside of Europe, according to a report in the Financial Times.

The bank, Germany's largest, is planning to "shrink or shut its U.S. equity and trading businesses," according to the report that cited people familiar with the bank's plans.

Deutsche Bank's push away from investment banking is part of an effort to rebuild the bank's trading operations and would include creating a "bad bank" - or none-core asset unit - that would hold billions of dollars in assets, according to the report.

That "bad bank" -- as it's described in the report -- would hold or sell off assets valued as much as €50 billion ($56.1 billion) after adjusting for risk. It would be made up mostly of long-dated derivatives, according to the Financial Times.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing last month vowed to make "tough cutbacks" during a speech to investors at the struggling lender's annual general meeting in Frankfurt.

"We will analyse (the bank's challenges) very closely and will be just as disciplined and uncompromising with this as we are with costs," Sewing said. "This means that we will further tighten our capital allocation and implement our hurdle rates rigorously group-wide. That benefits our shareholders."

"We're prepared to make tough cutbacks," he added. "We will accelerate transformation by rigorously focusing our bank on profitable and growing businesses which are particularly relevant for our clients. That is my pledge, and you can be sure of that."

5. -- Gary Woodland wins U.S. Open

Gary Woodland won his first U.S. Open title on Sunday, denying Brooks Koepka's bid for a third straight U.S. Open victory.

Woodland finished Sunday with a 30-foot birdie putt for a 2-under 69, giving him the lowest 72-hole score in six U.S. Opens at Pebble Beach and a three-shot victory over Koepka.

Koepka closed with a 68, making him the first player with all four rounds in the 60s at a U.S. Open without winning.

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· · · · ·

The Nazi guide to finding the proper spouse - Israel News
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 6:50 AM

Adolf Hitler salutes, standing in a Mercedes-Benz vehicle as SA troops parade past him in Nuremberg, Germany, 1935. (photo credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / CHARLES RUSSELL COLLECTION NARA)

“I found this on the shelf and thought you might know what to do with it,” she said as she handed me a thin paperback pamphlet with a German title and a swastika embossed on the cover.

Apparently, spring cleaning in the office can lead to some interesting discoveries when you work in the National Library of Israel Digital Content Department.

The book I now held in my hand was a copy of “Du Und Dein Volk,” or in English, “You and Your People,” a widely spread piece of Nazi propaganda that was published in early 1940 and distributed by the Reich Education Ministry to young adults finishing their education. Thousands of copies of this pamphlet were printed and distributed across Nazi Germany, providing the young graduates with an easy to read, condensed version of the Nazi doctrine that all Germans were required to know.

This particular copy of the pamphlet found on our shelves was bestowed to a graduate of the “Berufsschule für Tischler,” vocational school for carpentry in Vienna, named August Feigel. His name was written in cursive in blue ink on the first page of the book. It appears there alongside the name of his school, the date the book was gifted (July 6, 1940), and the signature of the school’s headmaster, suggesting this book was given as a gift to all graduating students.

Upon further inspection, and with a lot of help from my German-speaking colleagues, I understood that this “light reading” contained a general summary of Nazi ideology that outlined the responsibilities of the average German citizen, encouraging the youths to marry and have many children while warning them of the dangers of marrying someone improper, including those without the proper German mindset or someone who is not of Nordic blood.

In a section entitled, “Your Marriage and Your Children,” the text emphasizes the importance of marriage and of bearing as many healthy children as possible, to maintain and strengthen the right racial components for the good of society.

“Your genetic line is like roots underground. When two such roots meet and unite, a person grows like a plant and breaks through the soil,” reads the text. “The sun smiles upon it, rain falls, it’s blown by storms, it wilts and withers, and finally dies a human death. Yet the genetic stream flows on long after the sun and rain and storms of that one life have passed.”

The section goes on to discuss the importance of maintaining a clean genetic pool and the critical nature of choosing an appropriate spouse who has within them the appropriate racial ancestry, as well as the responsibility that lies with every individual to strengthen the Aryan race by producing healthy children. The chapter concludes with a summarized and condensed list of the ten key commandments to follow when choosing a spouse with which to build and strengthen German ideals.

“You now know how to choose your spouse and understand the meaning of the following principles from the Reich Office for People’s Health,” reads the text. It then goes on to list the 10 commandments for finding a spouse:

Always remember that you are a German.

Be sure to marry if you are genetically healthy.

Ensure that you keep your body clean.

Keep your soul and spirit clean.

As a German, you should only take a spouse of German or Nordic blood.

When deciding on a spouse, investigate his or her ancestry.

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Physical health is the prerequisite for outward beauty.

Marry only for love.

In relationships, do not seek a temporary plaything, look for a partner for marriage.

You should want as many children as possible.

This emphasis on maintaining the proper bloodline and increasing the pure German population was a key point for graduating students as they moved out of the structured environment of their education to the real world where they would fend for themselves.

After listing the ten initial commandments, the text adds an important warning to the reader: “People of absolutely pure blood are rare among us.” Just because someone matches the external criteria of the Aryan race, “that does not mean that he necessarily possesses all the spiritual characteristics that correspond to the physical appearance.”

“Enough advice and warnings,” concludes the section. “If you understood these rules, you can be assured that your instincts will lead you in the right direction. You should not marry out of the calculation, but rather from love!”

A few pages later, the pamphlet includes a photo depicting the ideal family, featuring a blonde woman surrounded by her children. The text goes on to describe the importance of family before switching to a discussion of “The Jewish Question” and preventing the birth of genetically ill offspring.

The final pages in the pamphlet include a template for the student to fill in his own family tree, leading back to his great grandparents, so that he could prove his pure lineage. August Feigel, the recipient of this book, did not take advantage of this opportunity.

“Woe to the generation that is given clarity and does not make use of it,” concludes the text. “There are only two options: to climb to liberating heights or to decline. We choose the first path, though we know it brings sacrifices and challenges, though it is difficult and will take more than one or two or three generations.”

Looking back over the last three generations, the Nazis did not achieve their goals in “purifying” the genetic pool but this pamphlet, now preserved in the National Library of Israel, stands as a witness to the dangers of racism and anti-Semitism that are still apparent today.

Special thanks to Dr. Stefan Litt for his help in writing this article.

This post was written as part of Gesher L’Europa, the NLI’s initiative to connect with Europe and make our collections available to diverse audiences in Europe and beyond.
For more stories like this visit the National Library of Israel's blog.

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· · · · · ·

Oil tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz - Google Search
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 6:43 AM

Image result for Oil tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz

Press review: NYT 'leak' to pressure Putin-Trump talks and Russia reacts to Hormuz crisis - Press Review
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 6:32 AM

TASS

Izvestia: Russia has no plans of tightening security in Strait of Hormuz

Moscow is not planning to beef up its military presence in the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of the recent oil tanker attacks, Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) Defense Committee Chairman Vladimir Shamanov told Izvestia. According to him, Russian vessels are not in jeopardy and therefore there are no grounds for tightening security. Meanwhile, the United States, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia have deployed additional forces to the Gulf of Oman, supposedly to protect their vessels from the Iranian threat.

However, other European countries have not responded to this clear provocation against Iran and the incident is unlikely to spoil their relations with the Islamic Republic, experts told the paper.

The Strait of Hormuz has strategic importance for the entire oil market: up to 40% of the world's hydrocarbon exports pass through it. However, as far as Russia is concerned, it has own channels for exporting hydrocarbons, so for Moscow, Hormuz is less important. That’s why the presence of Russia’s warships tasked with protecting navigation in the strait is not large-scale, Shamanov explained.

Russia and China are refraining from taking hasty steps following the example of Washington, which rushed to point fingers at Iran over the attack on the tankers. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas expressed doubts over Washington's evidence on Tehran’s alleged involvement in the explosion. According to Director of the Center on the Near and Middle East at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Vladimir Fitin, Berlin’s behavior proves that Western Europe is not ready to give up its partnership with Iran. "US statement on Tehran’s involvement in the attacks is the same fake news as its rhetoric on the use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar Assad," the expert said. "Western Europeans are not that blind to swallow any bait, which Washington gives them. They are well aware that this is an unfounded accusation, and that’s why they won’t rush to sever ties with Iran like in the case with the nuclear deal." The EU is unlikely to slap sanctions on Tehran until an international investigation into the tanker attacks is over. The expert noted that the attack on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf is apparently not the last. The US will continue pursuing its own game against Iran and carrying out similar provocations, Fitin said.

Kommersant: Putin-Trump meeting in limbo due to NYT 'leak' on US hacker attacks

Ahead of the G20 summit in Japan’s Osaka, which is expected to host a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the US has been ramping up its online attacks against Russia’s power grid, The New York Times has reported. Sources say that the hacker attacks are intended as a warning to Moscow against its alleged efforts to meddle in the 2020 presidential election. Experts told Kommersant that the new leak was aimed at provoking Moscow’s confrontational stance and undermining the normalization of Russian-US ties. Trump has slammed the NYT cyber attack report as a "virtual act of treason."

The recent NYT article, which came ahead of the G20 summit, has a clear political meaning. Kommersant writes that a similar situation occurred a year ago ahead of the Helsinki summit between the two presidents, when the American media reported on Russia’s alleged hacker attacks against the US power grid. As a rule, such stories about hackers resonate widely, and it is almost impossible to either confirm or deny them. "That’s why this is the best tool for creating a background for a new confrontation," said Director of the Franklin Roosevelt US Policy Studies Center at Moscow State University Yuri Rogulev.

Director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Ruslan Pukhov shares this opinion. According to him, the latest leak about US hacker attacks on Russia’s power grid may have a serious destabilizing influence given the current conflict between the two countries. "Information in The New York Times publication is nothing but a direct challenge to Russia, which Moscow cannot leave unanswered," he stressed. "By seeking to preempt and set a confrontational tone for a new Putin-Trump meeting, the adversaries of the US president, who are pursuing their own political ambitions, dealt a blow to their own security services, by actually confirming their sabotage activity against Russia," the expert said.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Ukrainian operator warns of gas supply risks to Europe

Ukraine’s gas transport system operator Ukrtransgaz has announced that it lacks funds for purchasing gas, warning that this could spark a massive, far-reaching energy crisis in a week. Experts believe that the threats may be an attempt to scare the local authorities into providing additional funding, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes. However, for Russia this situation is also dangerous since it may create obstacles for gas supplies to some European countries.

The company’s debt to gas suppliers in March-April reached 4.1 bln hryvnia (nearly $152 mln). Ukrtransgaz stressed that the gas producers are refusing to supply gas under the contract and the remaining volume will suffice only until June 24. The operator blames its financial problems on unfounded temporary tariffs introduced in late 2018.

The news broke ahead of the upcoming gas transit talks between Russia and Ukraine. Uncertainty still hangs over whether a new transit deal will be signed, with experts saying that in a best-case scenario, this would be a temporary agreement. The next round of consultations between Russia, Ukraine and the European Commission may be held in the second half of September, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said.

According to Director of the Law and Mediation Fund for the Fuel and Energy Complex Alexander Pakhomov, the company’s financial hurdles are unlikely to affect gas transit through Ukraine to European consumers. In order to avoid a crisis, the new government will find money to support the company’s operations, he said. "Now the fate of the gas transport system’s operator is one of central issues in the energy sphere, but there is no sense now in supporting it by large-scale and long-term investments, since no one knows what scenario to prepare for by 2020," the economist said.

The latest news once again confirms that there are risks for gas transit via Ukraine, said senior analyst at the Moscow-based investment bank BCS Premier Sergey Suverov in an interview with the paper. "Meanwhile, the statements by Ukrtransgaz may be viewed in the context of Ukraine’s domestic political struggle and as an attempt to get additional funding from the authorities," he said, voicing doubt that this situation could affect talks on transit.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Economy will be US president’s trump card in 2020 race

This week, US President Donald Trump will kick off his election campaign for the 2020 race with a rally in Orlando, Florida. This time, the White House occupant is expected to have stronger positions in his struggle against the Democrats, after no evidence was found in the alleged ‘Russia collusion’ commotion. Another advantage for Trump may be the successful implementation of his economic initiatives, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

Trump is setting a new tone, the paper says. The incumbent president’s campaign agenda is more advantageous than that of the Democrats. For example, Trump has something to boast of in the economy, and his spin masters want him to focus on rising stock markets and the lowest unemployment rate in the country over the past 50 years.

The Republicans will deal their major blows to the economic agenda of the Democrats, who seem to lean towards ‘socialist’ slogans. Besides, Trump and his allies may form a good donor basis. The US president has managed to collect more than $100 mln.

Meanwhile, political scientists of the Democratic Party believe that Trump is unlikely to repeat his success in 2016, when he lost the popular vote but won the election because the Electoral College voted in his favor.

However, Russian experts believe Trump has huge chances of being re-elected in 2020. According to Valdai Club Program Director and Director of the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO University Andrei Sushentsov, the Democratic Party lacks candidates who could defeat Trump. The latest opinion poll carried out by Fox News shows that Trump’s possible rival at the election might be Vice President Joe Biden, with 32% support.

Vedomosti: Russia’s central bank cuts key rate for first time since March 2018

The Bank of Russia Board of Directors lowered its key rate by 25 bp to 7.5% per annum on Friday for the first time since March 2018 and admitted the possibility of a further key rate reduction at one of its upcoming meetings. This year, the key rate may be lowered twice unless there are negative surprises, the central bank’s chief, Elvira Nabiullina, said.

The central bank may cut the key rate in July, if the inflation rate slows down due to a good harvest and the US Federal Reserve System starts lowering rates, Gazprombank’s analysts told Vedomosti. Chief economist of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Dmitry Polevoy also predicts that by late 2019 the key rate may reach 7%.

The Bank of Russia also lowered its GDP growth forecast for this year from 1.2-1.7% to 1.0-1.5%. Nabiullina explained the decision by weak economic growth in the first quarter (by 0.5%). The forecast for 2020-2021 remains unchanged. However, the central bank has improved its forecast on oil prices, saying that in 2019, the price will average $65 per barrel, up from $60 in its previous forecast. There is still uncertainty over the talks between OPEC and non-OPEC countries on the fate of the oil output cut deal, Nabiullina noted. The central bank’s further rhetoric on GDP dynamics will substantially depend on the effective implementation of the National Projects initiative, she said. Meanwhile, experts doubt whether the National Projects could make a real contribution to Russia’s economic growth.

TASS is not responsible for the material quoted in these press reviews

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Page 4

Mueller Report lays out case for impeachment
Monday June 17th, 2019 at 6:12 AM

John Dean, a star witness during Watergate who helped bring down the Nixon presidency, testifies that special counsel Robert Mueller left Congress with a "road map" for investigating President Donald Trump. (June 10) AP, AP

Those interested in reading the Mueller Report for themselves can download it for free.

"The Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election," better known as the Mueller Report, is not an easy read, but slogging through the 448 pages, including appendices, is worth the effort. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions, buttressed by more than a thousand footnotes of source work, tell a horrifying tale of widespread and successful interference in a U.S. presidential election by a hostile foreign power. More importantly, it lays out a case for obstruction of justice by a thin-skinned President Donald Trump anxious to hide that interference at all costs, lest it cast doubt on his legitimacy.

Mark Harmon, KNS columnist (Photo: Paul Efird / News Sentinel)

The page numbers I’m using are from the free pdf download.

The report’s second paragraph declared, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” The next 199 pages (minus a three-page notation of history of the Mueller investigation) detail the extent of that illegal interference: the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign; the release of hacked items via Wikileaks; and Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos bragging about Russian help for his side (foreign intelligence flags about that Papadopoulos statement began the FBI investigation).

Mueller also noted a widespread “social media campaign designed to amplify political and social discord in the United States” (page 12). That Russian campaign by early 2016 was specifically favoring Trump and disparaging Clinton. The Russian efforts even included purchasing political ads on social media and staging U.S. rallies and events. “Trump Campaign affiliates promoted dozens of tweets, posts, and other political content created by the IRA” (page 33).

5/1/19 8:00:19 AM -- Washington, DC, U.S.A -- Attorney General William Barr arrives to testify before the House Judiciary Committee hearing about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and his handling of the investigation. -- Photo by Jack Gruber, USA TODAY staff ORG XMIT: JG 137975 Bill Barr is on 5/1/ (Via OlyDrop)

Attorney General William Barr arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on "The Justice Department's Investigation of Russian Interference with the 2016 Presidential Election" on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 1,2019. Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

11:26 AM 6/17/2019 - U.S. Security Officials Still Consider Trump a Security Risk, and other stories

Why It's Necessary to Bring Jewish Communism into Full View

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» Trump News TV from Michael_Novakhov (12 sites): ABC News's YouTube Videos: Trump on Mueller, immigration and putting his personal touch on Oval Office: Part 2

Trump Warns of Market Crash if He’s Not Re-Elected in 2020

1. — Stock Futures Rise Modestly Ahead of Fed Meeting

2. — Trump Warns of Market Crash if He’s Not Re-Elected in 2020

RT @realDonaldTrump: The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I k… by realDonaldTrump Monday June 17th, 2019 at 7:01 AM

Trump, the Fed, Boeing, Deutsche Bank, Gary Woodland - 5 Things You Must Know thestreet.com/markets/5-thin… via @TheStreet by mikenov Monday June 17th, 2019 at 7:01 AM

1. -- Stock Futures Rise Modestly Ahead of Fed Meeting

2. -- Trump Warns of Market Crash if He's Not Re-Elected in 2020

3. -- Boeing Faces Turbulence in Restoring Public's Confidence in 737 MAX

4. -- Deutsche Bank's Overhaul Includes Creation of 'Bad Bank' - Report

5. -- Gary Woodland wins U.S. Open

Izvestia: Russia has no plans of tightening security in Strait of Hormuz

Kommersant: Putin-Trump meeting in limbo due to NYT 'leak' on US hacker attacks

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Ukrainian operator warns of gas supply risks to Europe

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Economy will be US president’s trump card in 2020 race

Vedomosti: Russia’s central bank cuts key rate for first time since March 2018

Those interested in reading the Mueller Report for themselves can download it for free.

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